Interesting article on Bleeding Cool, talking with various people involved with the early days of Marvel Studios. Too long to paste it all, but some highlights:
-Ike Perlmutter has been used as a scapegoat by those at Marvel Studios now, as his reclusive nature means he won't respond, and they can also take credit for any successes he may have engineered.
-Mort Handel, former chairman of Marvel Entertainment’s board of directors, says the company was in a bad spot when the money from the Spider-Man movies started rolling in. The X-Men deal was struck during Marvel's bankruptcy, and they do not make as much money on those as they do the Spider-Man movies.
-Mort: "I don’t want to dismiss Kevin [Feige’s] role, but let’s not make it larger than what it was." He gives Avi Arad much of the credit, and that Feige had capable people like Fine, Buckley, and Quesada when he took over.
-Jim Halpin, Marvel board of directors member since 1995, credits Arad and former Marvel Studio head David Maisel (credited as the studio's founding chairman in Age of Ultron). "He [Maisel] was the one who conceived them as a slate of movies and was able to finance them successfully, negotiating the deal, raising a $500 million line with no impact on Marvel’s balance."
-Halpin: "Feige couldn’t shine Ike’s shoes" and that "it’s all gone to his head, Feige is a legend in his own mind."
-Warners actually had the license to the Iron Man movie at the time, and Marvel was preparing to sell the rights to Cap and Thor as well, but Masiel stopped them. After getting Iron Man back, Masiel made the deal to do those low-budget animated Lionsgate direct-to-DVD movies. When they made a profit, it convinced Perlmutter to let Masiel pursue live action movies.