Marvel Studios, LLC, formerly known as Marvel Films, is an American film and television production company. Marvel Studios is the creator of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), a media franchise and shared universe of films and television series produced by the studio, based on characters that appear in Marvel Comics publications. The studio was founded in 1993 by Avi Arad as part of Marvel Entertainment Group and has been led by producer Kevin Feige, who serves as its president since 2007. The studio originally licensed the film rights to several Marvel characters before beginning to produce its own films in 2004, and has since regained many of those rights. In 2009, the Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel Studios' parent company Marvel Entertainment, and in 2015, they transferred Marvel Studios to the Walt Disney Studios, which has been a part of the Disney Entertainment division since 2023. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures has distributed most of the studio's films since The Avengers (2012).