Kevin Feige Explained Why It Took This Long For Marvel’s First Female-Led Superhero Movie

Of the 10 highest-billed characters for Avengers: Infinity War, all but one (Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow) are played by male actors. That’s not a great look for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which only released its first movie (and 20th overall) with a female character in the title earlier this year. But Captain Marvel, starring Brie Larson and co-written and -directed by Anna Boden, is coming in 2019, and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige promised more female-led superheroes movies will be “announced in the near future.”

While speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Feige said that he’s “anxious for the time” when it’s no longer a big deal for a superhero movie to star a woman, “but it is a norm. And it is less a story of, ‘Oh, look, a female hero,’ and it’s more a story of, ‘Oh, what’s this about Who’s this character I’m excited to see that.’ And I think we can get there.” Of course, considering he’s the boss of the MCU, Feige could have made, say, a Black Widow movie already, but baby steps.

But why has it taken this long for Captain Marvel (or something like it) “I think there are a lot of reasons, not the least of which was fighting for many years the erroneous notion that audiences did not want to see a female-led hero [film] because of a slew of films 15 years ago that didn’t work,” Feige said. “And my belief was always that they didn’t work not because they were female-led stories — they didn’t work because they were not particularly good movies.”

Ah, so it’s Catwoman‘s fault

Hm. Maybe it is actually Catwoman‘s fault.