Disney is planning to cut down on Marvel movie and TV releases as the company looks to reduce costs and avoid “superhero fatigue.”
In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Iger said Disney would be slowing down when it came to putting out content for its Marvel and Star Wars franchises.
He admitted that many decisionmakers had been focusing on pushing through projects that would prop up Disney+, noting that recent Marvel content was a major reflection of the “zeal” that had been directed at the company’s flagship streaming platform.
“Marvel is a great example of that,” he told CNBC. “It had not been in the television business at any significant level, and not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of TV series. Frankly, it diluted focus and attention.”
Earlier this year, Disney announced a broad restructuring program that would see the firm cutting $5.5 billion in costs. Cutting back on franchise-driven content, Iger said, would assist with this endeavor.
“You pull back not just to focus, but also as part of our cost containment initiative,” he explained. “Spending less on what we make, and making less.”
Iger’s big bet on Marvel
The conversation came a day after Disney announced that Iger would stay at the helm of the entertainment giant for two more years than initially planned, extending his contract through 2026. He returned to the company in November—after just 11 months away—agreeing to a two-year contract as CEO that saw him take over from successor (and predecessor) Bob Chapek.
During Iger’s first 15-year tenure as CEO, the House of Mouse made some of its biggest bets in the company’s history, acquiring Pixar, Marvel, 21st Century Fox, and Lucasfilm. Under his leadership, Disney’s market capitalization increased fivefold.
Marvel has been an excellent investment for Disney—it paid $4 billion for the rights to the comic book franchise in 2009, and had earned more than $22.5 billion from the acquisition by the end of 2022.
Avengers: Endgame, the 2019 Marvel smash hit that remains the second-highest-grossing movie of all time, raked in $2.8 billion at the global box office, and is just one of 10 Marvel movies to have crossed the billion-dollar milestone.
‘Superhero fatigue’
In a bid to maximize earnings from the brand—and more recently, lure viewers to the Disney+ streaming platform—Disney has ramped up the rate of Marvel releases in recent years.
Since 2017, the studio has released at least three movies a year, with three releases—Thunderbolts, Captain America: Brave New World, and a Deadpool sequel—already on the agenda for next year. Until 2016, Marvel put out one or two movies each year.
Television is where the company has really upped the ante, though, with six original Marvel series being released on Disney+ in 2021 and 2022, and a further five coming to the platform this year.
However, some of the studio’s most recent releases have struggled to whip up the same level of excitement as its earlier surefire hits.
Despite a strong opening weekend, February release Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s global ticket sales slumped, with the film taking $476 million worldwide. That’s not much more than pandemic-era releases Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Eternals, which earned $432 million and $402 million respectively at the global box office—and it’s a far cry from many of the studio’s earlier heavyweights, including the earlier films in the Ant-Man trilogy, which both earned more than half a billion dollars in ticket sales.
Last year’s She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel, meanwhile, were met with a poor reception from critics, with the new superheroes struggling to bring viewers to Disney’s streaming platform at the same rate as big-name characters.
And it isn’t just unfamiliar faces that have come up short for Marvel in recent years.
Secret Invasion, a series that sees Hollywood titan Samuel L. Jackson reprise the role of Nick Fury, reportedly had one of the worst premieres of all Marvel shows when it landed on Disney+ last month, while the latest installment in the Thor movie series was met with mixed reviews (although it earned more than $760 million at the box office, making it 2022’s eighth-biggest theater release).
With Marvel notching its 32nd movie release with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 this year—which became a box office hit—questions have been raised about whether audiences are starting to experience “superhero fatigue.”
Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige isn’t fazed, however, and remains convinced that audiences will never tire of new superhero content.
“There’s 80 years of the most interesting, emotional, groundbreaking stories that have been told in the Marvel comics, and it is our great privilege to be able to take what we have and adapt them,” he said in January.
