Chan’s credits included Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Ray Chan, a longtime supervising art director and production designer at Marvel Studios whose credits include Avengers: Endgame and the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine, died this week. Marvel Studios announced Chan’s death on Wednesday, remembering the Art Directors Guild Award-winning artist as “an incredible production designer who helped imagine and design the Marvel Cinematic Universe” and “a wonderful friend and colleague who will be dearly missed by everyone who had the privilege of working with him.” A cause of death was not provided.
“Ray was first and foremost a good friend to everyone at Marvel Studios. He was a talented collaborator who brought creativity and attention to detail to every frame of every movie he worked on, and who was able to bring out the best in each department he worked with,” Kevin Feige, CCO of Marvel Entertainment and president of Marvel Studios, and co-president Louis D’Esposito said in a joint statement. “He was the nicest human being and was such a pleasure to work with, hugely generous, and the kind of person who could take the seed of an idea and turn it into something beautiful. We are devastated by his passing. He will be missed by everyone at Marvel, and our sincerest condolences go out to his family and friends.”
Chan first joined Marvel Studios on 2011’s Thor: The Dark World as supervising art director and went on to collaborate with filmmaker James Gunn as supervising art director on 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, director Joss Whedon on 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Scott Derrickson on 2016’s Doctor Strange, crafting alien worlds like Xandar, the mystical Sanctum Sanctorum, and the planets Titan and Vormir. Chan worked with Joe and Anthony Russo on 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios’ highest-grossing movie, for which he won an Art Directors Guild Award.
He also served as art director for additional photography on Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Far From Home in 2019 and production designer on the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in 2021. Most recently, Chan worked as the production designer for additional photography on last year’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and the production designer on the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine.
“Each film that Marvel [puts out], it’s always a very involved process, for myself and Charlie [Wood, production designer], each one is unique and a challenge,” Chan said in a 2018 interview with The Credits. “Guardians of the Galaxy is different to Ultron, which is different to Dr. Strange. Infinity Wars was probably the biggest challenge. It comes off as a collaboration, working with a great studio like Marvel. There are great scriptwriters, directors, they bring a lot to the table. They’d come up with ideas, first, and we’d bounce of that.”
Chan’s other credits include 2023’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves as production designer, and supervising art director on such films as National Treasure, Blood Diamond, Knight and Day, and Wrath of the Titans. He was the art director for AVP: Alien vs. Predator in 2004, Alfonso Cuarón’s three-time Oscar-nominated Children of Men in 2006, and senior art director on Robin Hood in 2010. He also worked in commercials, creating spots for major brands like Mercedes, Jeep, IBM, General Electric, American Express, Merrill Lynch, NY Times, and Land Rover. He appeared in the documentary Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in 2021, where he took viewers behind-the-scenes of designing the city Madripoor.
Chan is survived by his wife, Lindsay, and his children, Caspar and Sebastian. Chan’s final credit will be Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine, which is in theaters this July.
