Marvel Entertainment was a moribund toymaker not even twenty years ago.
Today, Marvel Studios is the dominant player both in Hollywood and in
global pop culture. How did an upstart studio conquer the world? In
MCU, beloved culture writers Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin
Edwards draw on more than a hundred interviews with actors, producers,
directors, and writers to present the definitive chronicle of Marvel
Studios and its sole, ongoing production, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
For all its outward success, the studio was forged by near-constant
conflict, from the contentious hiring of Robert Downey Jr. for its 2008
debut, Iron Man, all the way up to the disappointment of Ant-Man and
the Wasp: Quantumania and shocking departures of multiple Marvel
executives in 2023. Throughout, the authors demonstrate that the
original genius of Marvel was its resurrection and modification of
Hollywood's old studio system. But will it survive its own spectacular
achievements? Dishy and authoritative, MCU is the first book to tell
the Marvel Studios story in full--and an essential, effervescent account
of American mass culture.
