Marvel Studios

Marvel Studios is a film studio and a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios. The company was founded as Marvel Films by Marvel Entertainment Group. The division was formerly headed by Avi Arad from May 13, 1993, as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, until October 1998, when he took on other duties within the company such as executive producer for the studios’ film output.
==History==
Partnering with in 2004, Marvel plans to enter the direct-to-DVD market with eight animated films with Lionsgate handling distribution.
Marvel entered into a non-recourse financing structure with Merrill Lynch Commercial Finance Corp. that is collateralized by certain movie rights to a total of ten characters from Marvel's vast vault. Marvel gets $525 million to make a maximum of 10 movies based on the company's properties over eight years, according to the parameters of the deal with Paramount in September 2004. Those properties were: , the , , , & , , , , , and .
In 2005, Michael Helfant joined the studio as President and Chief Operating Officer. In November 2005, Marvel gained the film rights to {{WPS|Iron Man (2008 film)|Iron Man]] from . In 2006, Marvel revealed that it had regained the film rights to The Incredible Hulk. In April 2006, Paramount Pictures acquired the rights to from . That year the film was announced to be a Marvel Studios production. Lionsgate Entertainment subsequently dropped the Black Widow motion picture project it had since 2004, giving the rights back to Marvel.
In March 2007, David Maisel was named Chairman and Kevin Feige was named President of Production as began filming. In 2008, Marvel Studios signed a lease with Raleigh Studios to host its headquarters and production offices and film the next four movies on the studios' slate, including and , at their Manhattan Beach facilities.