We’ve seen plenty of franchises carry on for way too long, but as of yet, we haven’t seen one become so large and all-encompassing that it collapses in on itself. If it’s going to happen to any property in the industry, then it’ll happen to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Obviously, Kevin Feige’s baby is the highest-grossing and most popular ongoing film and television saga on the planet, but can it continue to sustain itself in perpetuity? Some fans have already been critical of Phase Four, and with upwards of 30 projects currently in various stages of development and/or production, the onslaught of content will continue for the foreseeable future.
During an interview with Murphy’s Multiverse, Ms. Marvel co-creator and producer Sana Amanat was asked if the MCU will ever run out of ways to keep reinventing itself and remaining fresh, to which she answered firmly in the negative.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’m too worried about that cause I feel like there’s so many different kinds of stories. I mean Marvel, let’s see, has been around for over 80 years and there’s so many different kinds of characters-I think we’re at like 7,500 characters-so I feel pretty confident that we’ll be okay.
Not to say we’re going to be doing all of those characters, but there’s a lot of different kinds of stories that you can tell and, also, ways to kind of retell them. So I’m not too worried about it. I think it’s really just gonna be about playing with different-what we’re doing right now-which is playing with genre and playing with, sort of different kinds of characters and bringing new perspectives on them.”
Things have been going swimmingly for 14 years, but the Disney Plus era has effectively doubled the MCU’s output, so we’ll find out one way or another if audiences will eventually begin to lose interest in the long-running superhero series.
