Yahoo News Here’s How Much Disney Is Cutting Its Marvel Production
Bob Iger wants you to marvel more at his Marvel films and series. To make them better, he’s making fewer.
On Tuesday, the Disney CEO said Marvel is going to decrease its volume to “probably about two TV series a year” and 2-3 movies annually.
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“We’ve been working hard with the studio to reduce output and focus on quality,” Iger said on Disney’s fiscal second quarter (Q2) earnings call. “That’s particularly true with Marvel.”
“We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four, and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two— a maximum of three,” he continued.
Cool, so what you got? Iger said Marvel has “a couple of good films in [2025], and then we’re heading to more ‘Avengers,’ which we’re extremely excited about.”
He says “overall” he feels “really good” about the upcoming Marvel slate — and beyond. Let’s not forget this whole company was built on cartoons.
“We’re gonna balance sequels with originals, particularly in animation,” Iger said. “We had gone through a period where our original films in animation, both Disney and Pixar, were dominating. We’re now swinging back a bit to lean on sequels.”
We’ll say you’ve swung back. There is more “Toy Story” coming, more “Inside Out,” “Zootopia,” “The Bad Guys,” both a live-action and animated “Moana,” and a few more “Frozen” films, to name a few planned sequels. “Inside Out 2,” which marks Pixar’s big comeback and has excellent early buzz, comes out in theaters on June 14, 2024. Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars are considered Disney’s core brands.
Thanks to last year’s writers and actors strikes, Disney/Pixar had nothing better for theaters in the January-to-March quarter than giving COVID casualties “Soul,” “Luca,” and “Turning Red” their day on the big screen. (To be fair to Disney, that was still better than what some other studios had available to movie theaters.)
“I just think that right now, given the competition and the overall movie marketplace, actually there’s a lot of value in the sequels obviously because they’re known and it takes less in terms of marketing,” Iger said.
For Marvel specifically, there is next year’s “Thunderbolts,” an original, as well as sequels for “Deadpool,” “The Avengers,” and “Captain America.”
“It will just be a balance which we think is right,” Iger said.
Sure, but the balance that Iger seems to “think is right” is like 75 percent (or more) in favor of the sequels. “Deadpool 3,” aka “Deadpool vs. Wolverine,” is Marvel’s sole 2024 film; it will be released in theaters on July 26, 2024. Iger previously promised fans “a lot of newness” from Marvel.
Disney revealed its fiscal Q2 earnings a few hours before the conference call. Financially, the company outperformed Wall Street’s expectations. It also added more Disney+ subscribers than was originally forecast, and turned a surprise profit from its entertainment-streaming business. All told, Disney lost $18 million from its direct-to-consumer business, which means sports pulled the rug out on overall streaming profitability. Iger maintains Disney+ itself will turn a profit in the summer quarter — for now, Hulu appears to be carrying that burden.
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