Iger seems to have long had a sense that something was wrong at Marvel, but Ride of a Lifetime suggests that he's fairly hands-off, trusting his people to make their own judgment calls. Indeed, that appears to be one of the reasons Perlmutter agreed to sell to Disney in the first place; he understood that he'd retain creative freedom as CEO of Marvel Entertainment. Still, for some time Perlmutter had been telling Iger that he was having trouble with Feige, and that he was thinking of replacing him. But he'd never come up with any solid proposals, always saying he needed more time to think about it, and Iger hadn't pushed the issue. Now Horn informed Iger of his conversation with Feige, and the two eventually decided a major corporate restructure was necessary.
According to Iger, they gave Perlmutter one last chance. He and Horn flew down to New York to have dinner with Marvel's CEO, and they told him they were there to draw a line under the issue. "You're making Kevin ill with the way you're treating him," Iger recalls saying. "You're driving him out of the company, and I can't have that." It sounds to have been a singularly uncomfortable experience, with Perlmutter insisting that Feige couldn't be trusted. But, again, he had no alternative proposals. The decision was made; Marvel Studios would be pulled out of Marvel Entertainment, with Feige reporting in directly to Alan Horn, and the Marvel Creative Committee was disbanded.
