They always act like nobody knew who Iron Man, Thor, Hulk and Captain America were. These weren't small budget movies being created in obscurity that "film studios didn't care about", Marvel got $150-200 million budgets for all of them but the first Iron Man at a mere $140 million. Avengers was well over $200 million and that was established before Thor and CA even came out and probably before they knew the returns on Iron Man 2. This was all before Disney got involved too, Disney bought Marvel in 2009 but didn't take over the films until 2013. There had been hype about Marvel producing the movies themselves instead of licensing out since they announced they were switching to that rather than licensing in 2005. This wasn't a crazy idea, Warner and DC were in the same company since 1972. Every DC movie they've probably seen except the Adam West Batman one wasn't a licensed out movie like Marvel had been doing before their bankruptcy. Marvel had licensed out basically all these characters before, some of them even got films like Hulk and Captain America, they just had licensed them to pretty shitty companies who would pay cash.