Five years on to the month since Avengers: Endgame cemented the MCU‘s status as the biggest movie franchise of all time, the world of Marvel Studios finds itself in much different health. While Endgame brought home $3 billion worldwide, its most recent production The Marvels could barely scrape together $200 million at the box office. Clearly, something needs to be done.
Disney chief Bob Iger thinks he knows what that something is. As per the company’s quarterly earnings call (via Variety), Iger decreed that Marvel is “slowly going to decrease volume” over the next couple of years and he’s working to have the studio release “two TV series a year instead of what had become four” and “reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, or a maximum of three.”
To recap, it looks like we’re heading for two movies and TV series a year. And, as you would expect, the fandom is reacting entirely calmly and is in total agreement about this. As Cyclops would say… NOT! On the one hand, many are firmly of the belief this is a cap Marvel should’ve had in place since the start of the Multiverse Saga, clearly feeling that the splurge of content we’ve had since 2021 is to blame for the steady decline in audience interest.
Others, meanwhile, are taking a more Magneto-like extremist viewpoint and think Iger should limit Marvel to a single movie a year!
Of course, not everyone’s going to love the idea of less MCU content. So some believe that Iger should really be focusing on quality, not quantity.
Elsewhere, we have those who haven’t kept up with the MCU at all and are stunned that four productions per calendar year is considered a strict limit. Oh honey, wait ’til you find out we had four movies and five TV shows in 2021!
Is Marvel Ant-Manning the MCU the right thing to do?
Naturally, every fan has their own opinion on the MCU’s shrinking strategy, but is it really a good thing or not? First of all, I think we have to accept that, at this point, quality is almost a non-factor. As everyone found out when they belatedly caught it on streaming, The Marvels is a completely solid slice of superhero entertainment and far from deserving of its status as Marvel’s lowest-grossing film. Clearly, audiences had just reached a zenith of exhaustion with the franchise by last November.
A long break has certainly helped, as all the signs are pointing to Deadpool & Wolverine winning a lot of drifted viewers back into the fold. That certainly suggests that “less is more” for the MCU, meaning the Iger Cap — not to be confused with the Feige Cap, which the Marvel prez wears on his head at all times — is surely a good thing.
That said, all those fans noting how this should’ve been in play all along are making a vital point. It is possible that, outside of “special” releases like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Deadpool & Wolverine, the audience just isn’t interested anymore. To test that theory, we’ll really have to see how more regular MCU fare like Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts perform in 2025. If they sink in a similar fashion to The Marvels, it might be time for Marvel to admit that viewers are just bored of the whole “shared universe” model altogether.
Who knows, maybe Ant-Manning the MCU will turn out to be a good thing. Or maybe, the franchise is just like the giant Paul Rudd skull in Deadpool 3; no amount of cuts can make a difference because the scythe has already been swung.
