ElevenLabs Adds Stan Lee to Iconic Marketplace Under New Deal
ElevenLabs signed a deal with Stan Lee Universe to license stan lee's voice and likeness for commercial AI use, adding the Marvel creator to its Iconic Marketplace. The company paired the announcement with an AI-narrated video and said the rollout will extend into books, music, and visual templates.
Stan Lee Universe Deal
Chaz Rainey, a board member for Stan Lee Universe, said the partnership would continue Lee's fan connection and make his voice in comics a reality. He also said, "Stan always believed in meeting his fans where they were: in the pages of a comic, at a convention, or in a quick on-screen cameo," and added, "His voice, his image, his love of storytelling… ElevenLabs gives us a way to keep that alive and in fans’ hands in a way that’s true to who he was,"
The deal matters because ElevenLabs' Iconic Marketplace is a collection of voice and video likenesses from celebrities that companies can officially license for their products. Lee, who died in 2018, now sits inside that system as a commercial AI asset rather than only a legacy name attached to Spider-Man and the Hulk.
Books, Music, Templates
ElevenLabs said it will launch Stan Lee Book Club of the Month and use Lee's voice to narrate a different book every month through Eleven Reader. The first title in the series will be Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, which gives the project an immediate consumer-facing use case beyond the announcement video.
ElevenCreative Music will also get two filters inspired by Lee called "Superhero Cinematic Swells" and "Retro Hero Fanfare." Users will be able to listen to books on Eleven and create "Stan-inspired music" in Finetunes, then generate Lee's likeness in comic book-inspired templates through the visual generator.
Michael Caine Deal
Late last year, Michael Caine signed a deal to have his voice recreated via ElevenLabs' tools, giving the company another high-profile example of celebrity voice licensing before the Stan Lee announcement. That earlier move helps show how quickly the business is moving from novelty demos to an actual marketplace of licensed performance assets.
The friction point is obvious: a deceased creator's voice and image are now being packaged for products that can scale month after month. ElevenLabs is betting that a licensed archive, not a one-off stunt, is the cleaner way to sell AI-generated narration, music, and visuals, and the Stan Lee deal is its clearest test yet.
