Although Marvel Comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have both become massive moneymakers for Marvel Studios and their parent company, the Walt Disney Company, it seems creators are not being paid as much as you’d think. In fact, many comic book creators working under Marvel have vocalized their frustrations with wages. Especially when their characters are adapted from comic book pages and placed into the billion-dollar filmmaking industry. Now it seems a new report has opened up another can of worms. Marvel apparently has strict cameo rules which also lowers creators’ wages – even those written in contracts.
As revealed by THR, via ScreenRant, Marvel reportedly has their own idea for what constitutes as a cameo. The very strict definitions that they’ve invented are then used to pay creators less than what their contracts are promised to pay them. For example, it’s stated that “a character’s appearance is considered a cameo role if they get less than 15% of the total screen time of a film.” This was further illustrated in a specific example.
They took the time to discuss The Winter Soldier and his appearance in Captain America: Civil War. Because of the rules that Marvel has in place, his appearance is considered a cameo, even though he has 22 minutes of screen time. But because the film has a runtime of 2 hours and 28 minutes, that 22 minutes is considered less than 15%. Therefore that’s why they call his appearance a cameo even though that’s a decent bit of the film’s runtime and he still has an integral role in the story. Because of this, creator Ed Brubaker was allegedly paid less as a result.
It’s definitely a shocking contractual rule if true. Disney and Marvel are both incredibly wealthy companies, so it doesn’t make sense that they should compensate their creators with so little. For example, this rule even applies to Avengers: Infinity War, and how Captain America only appeared for less than seven and a half minutes. This appearance likely wouldn’t be considered a cameo by most audiences – but because of Marvel’s strict rules it technically is by their standards.
As more of these reported details come to light, it remains unclear if Marvel will change how they compensate creators or not. For the time being, however, it’s certainly eye-opening for what goes on behind-the-scenes.