It's not easy to be great. It takes a lot of work - and multiple drafts.

Marvel Studios had a track record in its first 12 years of being 'all-killer, no filler' with hit after hit after hit, with industry pundits asking before each movie 'Is this the one where they miss?' only to be soundly defeated. While Marvel Studios expansion into TV left Kevin Feige and co. distracted a bit to finally show even they aren't perfect, what has also emerged is that below the line there's a writer Marvel frequently calls on to help save a project.

While his credited title is simply 'screenwriter,' over the past 10 years he has developed a reputation inside the movie House of Ideas as a fixer, a closer, and someone with "a reputation for taking projects over the finish line" according to The Hollywood Reporter. He is a defacto 'graduate' of the shortlived Marvel Studios' screenwriting program of the early '10s, and while he has written first drafts on a variety of unmade Marvel projects - he earns his keep for writing the final drafts of other people's scripts, and in some cases re-writing the script during filming on location - even if its in Australia.

His name is Eric Pearson.

Meet Eric Pearson, Marvel Studios' script doctor

A 'script doctor' is a writer who joins a movie or TV series already in progress, and can take notes from the director, producers, and others involved to revise the previously-written scripts to add, remove, clarify, and otherwise improve the script towards the filmmakers' goals. Inside Marvel Studios they call it 'plussing', which we'll get to in a moment. But Pearson has been Marvel Studios' script doctor since 2014 - being enlisted to help save the beleaguered Ant-Man movie after co-writer/director Edgar Wright left after eight years of development, with much of his crew leaving with him.

"It was a good time to be in Marvel 12 to 14 hours a day and be focused on work,” Pearson told Yahoo in 2017. "There were a bunch of notes that needed to be done, and they said do them all. … I think I reminded them that I could get them 30 pages in a day … when they’re in an emergency situation."

While Pearson didn't get officially credited as a writer on that movie (as it already went through drafts from Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam MacKay, and Paul Rudd), he has said that the movie's strip-club scene and the Stan Lee cameo were all him.

That led to a Christmas Eve call from Marvel Studios to drop everything and begin re-writing the script for Thor: Ragnarok seven days later on New Year's Day.

“They were like, ‘We have a pressure-filled situation and we know Eric can turn it around fast and work within our system and knows the world and knows the characters,'” Pearson told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017.

In what he has later described as a Page 1 rewrite of a previous script by Craig Kyle and Christopher L. Yost, Pearson took what he describes as "the puzzle pieces" of the movie - the characters - and Marvel asked him to re-build a puzzle into something new, a different puzzle.

"There were tons of challenges. I came in when there were so many puzzle pieces already there. When I got there, they were kind of finalizing Cate Blanchett for Hela. They wanted to use Skurge, they wanted to use Valkyrie. They knew the Hulk was going to be in there," Pearson said. "They dumped all the puzzle pieces out in front of me and said, 'Build a puzzle.'"

Pearson worked and re-worked the script for six months, then ended up moving to Australia to continue work while on the set of Thor: Ragnarok - and as a bonus, while there, met a person who eventually became his wife. As if he wasn't busy enough, he also did rewrites on the Spider-Man: Homecoming movie as it was simultaneously being shot back in the US.

That kind of hustle and creativity under deadline made him an in-demand person inside Marvel Studios, with him being tagged in to do the same kind of work on both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. He did eventually get to write a script of his own with 2021's Black Widow, but even after that, he continued to be the writer to call when they were in the clutch so to speak, swooping in to help remedy issues the studio had with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Thunderbolts*, the upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps, as well as the beleaguered Blade movie.

Pearson isn't Marvel exclusive - his unique skills were put into use for 2018's Pacific Rim Uprising, 2019's Pokémon Detective Pikachu, 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong, and 2024's Transformers One - but in all of that time, he is still an integral part of the MCU machine. 

Eric Pearson and the art of 'Plussing'

Eric Pearson didn't start out with a plan to write the final drafts of most of the MCU's movies - he got his start with Marvel in 2010 as part of the aforementioned Screenwriting Program. His MCU scripts were for an unmade Cloak & Dagger movie, as well as one for the one-time Avenger Ares. Although those haven't gotten made, it's there that he learned about being a script doctor - or 'plussing' as it's known at Marvel Studios.

"'Plussing' is a term that Pearson was introduced to in the Marvel Writers Program. It refers to making minor adjustments to a scene to elevate it to its full potential. "Don’t waste any pages," a Creative Screenwriting piece interviewing Pearson relays. "The magnitude of the Marvel Movies is so huge, that every scene has to do double duty – deliver plot and emotional punch in minimal time."

During that time, Pearson became known as an internal writer on-call for Marvel, writing four of the five Marvel Shorts films in the early '10s - two of which were directed by Feige's Marvel Studios co-president, Louis D'Esposito. One of those Marvel Shorts, Agent Carter, ended up being greenlit as an ABC TV series - and Pearson was sent off to help manage it as its story editor.

"I was kind of like the little cousin for a long time, and then it was like, ‘Oh, no, we can trust Eric to know the world, and supply a lot of material, too,'" Pearson said.

Pearson says that one of the big lessons he learned early on working for Marvel Studios and under Kevin Feige was about the power of the third act of the story. Fitting because in many cases, he's brought in during the third act of the creation of these movies. His lesson on writing a script is "once you reach the third act, sprint to the finish" - and it feels like by the time he gets hired and there's already a release date, and $200+ million riding on the project, he knows to sprint to the finish of a revised script as well.

But no, he isn't working on Avengers: Doomsday yet... but then again, they only just began filming.

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters