[8] His maternal grandfather, Robert E. Short, was a television producer in the 1950s, working on soap operas including The Guiding Light and As the World Turns.

[9][10][11] After high school, Feige attended the University of Southern California, the alma mater of his favorite directors: George Lucas, Ron Howard and Robert Zemeckis.

[13] His early work includes being assistant to executive producer Lauren Shuler Donner on the films Volcano (1997) and You've Got Mail (1998).

[10] On the first X-Men film, released in 2000, Donner made Feige an associate producer due to his knowledge of the Marvel Universe.

He envisioned creating a shared universe just as creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had done with their comic books in the early 1960s.