The President of Marvel Studios has revealed that the movies franchise will feature a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender character “in the next decade or sooner”.

Kevin Feige was interviewed by Collider and Slash over the weekend, within days of the historic federal ruling which legalised same sex marriage across the entirety of the United States, and inevitably the portrayal of homosexuality in the Marvel universe cropped up on both occasions.

While there are no concrete plans in place to include such a character in any of the movies scheduled – basically, up until the end of the decade – Feige suggested that it would be a certainty at some stage. “Well in the drawing board going up to 2019 it remains to be seen,” he told Collider.

Kevin FeigeKevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios

“The comics always make the path that we get to have the fun of saying, 'Yeah let's choose this way or let's choose this way', and I think there are a lot of cool things happening in the comics now that - it's usually a five to ten-year cycle between when something happens in the comics and when we can do it in the movie, sometimes a little less, but Civil War is certainly about the ten-year mark. Winter Soldier, I think, was around that time.”

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The producer, who was named president of production at Marvel in 2007, has been involved in films whose combined worldwide grossing is north of $8 billion. He continued: “So we always look at stuff that's happening in the comics and go, 'Where could we do that?' Sometimes it's sooner, but there's no reason why that couldn't happen in the next decade or sooner.”

In a separate interview with Slash Film, he was asked a similar question, to which he responded “there is no reason why that can’t happen any time soon. You know, we pull the characters from the comics, for the most part, and they’ve been forging new ground for decades in the comics.”

The interviewer pointed out in his original article that 129 characters in the Marvel universe are defined as LGBT on its Wikia site. “They’ve been very progressive in the comics. And even more recently in a very important and progressive way. And we keep track of all of those things and are inspired by all of those things, so I’d love it to find an organic, meaningful and natural way for that to happen at some point in the not so distant future.”

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