Olivia Wilde breaks silence on top secret Marvel film at Sony, confirms Kevin Feige is involved

Actor/filmmaker Olivia Wilde has finally broken her silence on the ultra-secret Marvel film she is set to direct for Sony Pictures. During a recent appearance on the Shut Up Evan podcast, Wilde discussed her excitement — and while she couldn't confirm whether the project is about Spider-Woman (which has been rumored) — she did reveal that Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige is involved.

"All I can say is that is by far the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. Not only do I feel like I get to tell a story that…God, it’s like listen to me trying to avoid Kevin Feige’s pellet gun," she said.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Feige (promoted to Marvel's Chief Creative Officer last fall) is lending a hand on the clandestine production. After all, he heavily consulted on Tom Holland's two Spider-Man movies that followed Peter Parker's Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in 2016's Captain America: Civil War. Despite some head-butting between Disney and Sony, Feige is helping the latter turn its cinematic Spidey license into a massively successful franchise that intersects with the MCU.

In her podcast interview, Wilde also touched on the fact that female directors are — at last — getting a seat at the superhero table. Over the last few years, both the MCU and DCEU have tapped women like Patty Jenkins, Anna Boden, Cate Shortland, and Chloé Zhao to helm major blockbusters such as Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Black Widow, and Eternals.

“We are seeing this incredible influx of female directors and storytellers getting to take hold of this genre, of this superhero space, and infuse it with their own perspective," Wilde added. "So not only do I get to tell this story as a director, but I get to develop this story and that’s was what made it so exciting."

The director is proud to count herself among "this wave of women who are showing up and saying 'we are not only going to step in and try and tell this story like men do, we're actually going to reframe the stories themselves.'"

She continued: "And the industry is, as far as I can tell, really supportive of that. There is a sea change and it's because of these decades of trailblazers who demanded this over and over and over again and it's finally broken through and I'm very fortunate to be there with it."

Wilde is co-writing the Sony-Marvel project with her fellow Booksmart collaborator, Katie Silberman. "To know that we went from telling a story about female friendship in high school to this other stratosphere now, feels super exciting," Wilde said.