Marvel’s Netflix Slate Is Going Nowhere Despite Potential Disney/Fox Deal

Marvel‘s street-level heroes will remain on Netflix for the foreseeable future, and that’s despite Disney approaching 21st Century Fox to broker a landmark deal.

Early last week, we learned that the Mouse House had opened negotiations with Fox about the possibility of acquiring its entertainment divisions, which would open up the door for the X-Men (and Marvel’s First Family!) to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Those talks are said to be on hold for the time being, but in a follow-up statement, The Wall Street Journal’s Ben Fritz went on record to clarify that, yes, Marvel’s Netflix slate (read: The Defenders et. al) will remain on that platform for years to come, and that Disney’s newfound streaming service is expected to launch with new Marvel shows, along with a live-action Star Wars series.

Via Twitter:

To answer the same question from a few people: The Marvel shows currently on Netflix, and any spin-offs from them, will stay on that platform

— Ben Fritz (@benfritz) November 9, 2017

That means future instalments of Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Daredevil and Iron Fist – not to mention spinoff series in the vein of The Punisher – will remain on Netflix, while Disney shifts the focus to entirely new TV shows based on other Marvel properties. Think of how Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Inhumans launched via ABC and you’ll begin to get an idea of what the Mouse House has in store.

Granted, aside from a tentative 2019 release window, the small print of Disney’s streaming service is being kept under lock and key. It’ll seemingly be “substantially” cheaper than Netflix’s tiered pricing model, largely because it’ll launch with fewer titles. That’s the official word from Disney CEO Bob Iger, who noted that:

I can say that our plan on the Disney side is to price this substantially below where Netflix is. That is in part reflective of the fact that it will have substantially less volume. It’ll have a lot of high quality because of the brands and the franchises that will be on it that we’ve talked about. But it’ll simply launch with less volume, and the price will reflect that. There’s a gigantic potential Disney customer base out there that we’re going to seek to attract with pricing that is commensurate with or that balances the quality of the brands and franchises that are in there, but also takes into account the volume. And that will give us an opportunity to grow in volume and to have the pricing over time reflect the added volume as this product ages.

Next up for Marvel and Netflix is The Punisher‘s premiere on November 17th, and it seems the Frank Castle solo series has garnered mixed reviews ahead of launch. It may be an unflinching portrait of grief and PTSD, but many critics (our own Robert Yaniz Jr. included) have called out the standalone series for its bloated, 13-part story.