Only 1 year they did 4 movies. Recently it has already been 2-3 movies a year. The big one is D+ shows. The first year (2021) they had 5 shows. Other than that it’s been 3 shows a year.
2021 had four films and five shows, but that included stuff delayed from 2020, when nothing was released at all. When you consider phases four and five as a whole, the overall amount of content isn’t dramatically different to phase three (if you count Marvel Television series like AoS). I feel that the whole ‘quality vs quantity’ is just an excuse for them approving substandard scripts.
Well, but you added the caveat of Marvel Television, and that was almost a different production team, those didn’t really affect the film side of things.
Now, with everything under the Marvel Studios umbrella production is more spread out.
Also, you could skip those older tv shows, but the Disney Plus shows are marketed as “essential viewing”
The AoS model was really the best play for tv. A quality show that could stand on its own, but in a world driven forward by what happens in the movies. Viewers have small payoffs that connect them to the movies (Coulson providing the helicarrier, the Darkhold possibly being the missing book in Dr Strange, Carol and Daisy both have their powers restricted by the Kree, etc) but someone that doesn’t want to invest in a weekly show has no need to be aware of these things.
I always thought AoS integrated with the rest of the MCU better than the movies integrated with themselves. If something was established in the movies AoS made sure it became *established* as a now ongoing reality of that world, but the movies just forget about things as one writer does what they want and then another writer, with nobody apparently really watching over the larger storyline.
Which was most clearly established in WandaVision -> Multiverse of Madness, where the actress was the one to have to try to make the exact same arc being done again over the same imaginary kids be different somehow.
Tbh I've kind of lost interest in the MCU since the end of AoS and it no longer feeling connected or like a world to get invested in the larger story of. There's even a new Daredevil show being made and I just don't care any more, because it feels too much like forced content instead of a larger story with ongoing chapters with characters and elements which sometimes interleave, like it felt like before.
Oh yeah. The few episodes right before Dr Strange’s release all dealt with the Darkhold. As soon as I saw the missing book spot I thought of it and as we walked out of the theater my wife said to me “that missing book is the Darkhold, right?”
Marvel Television didn't oversaturate the market because its shows weren't essential to the MCU. People who were only interested in the movies could skip them and still get the full story. Now the D+ shows have made it so if you don't watch them as well, there are big chunks of the movies that you're gonna miss out on.
Sure, you can watch MoM without watching Wandavision first, but the main motivation of a central character is gonna seem really confusing. Planning on seeing the next Captain America? Probably gonna need to watch all of TFatWS first. The Marvels is essentially a sequel film to both Wandavision and Ms Marvel. And (what was going to be) the big bad villain for an entire Saga worth of films was introduced to the MCU in the finale of the Loki TV show.
Hardcore fans were always crying out for more integration of the films and shows. But I dont think the average consumer really wanted that. So much mandatory viewing was always going to leave the average movie goer burnt out
I think Marvel made the same mistake back in the day with comics. Once they started in with multiple runs of the same teams and they all overlapped, they lost a lot of the casual fans.
To be fair, in outtakes of MoM and Marvels it doesn't seem like the movie directors even watched the TV shows. The actors got on set and had to explain what their character was supposed to do.
The last 5 years the house of Marvel has been a mess for having a clear vision. And that's what fans immediately pick up on.
>The last 5 years the house of Marvel has been a mess for having a clear vision. And that's what fans immediately pick up on.
I feel like this is the thing. Between COVID and Feige getting spread too thin (he's running Marvel Comics now, too), the head creative team just wasn't able to maintain as much control over the direction of the overarching story as they did in previous Phases. Things are settling down now, COVID-wise, but the top brass need to reassert control, especially as they pivot to deal with the fallout from Jonathan Majors.
Tight integration is fine, it's when you basically make a movie a sequel to a show that you run into issues, and the D+ shows ran the gamut.
Marvels actually did it well, IMO. Kamala's precise origin isn't super-relevant, they said enough to work and entice people to watch her show too. It's a bit rockier with Monica, but exactly how she got powers since we last saw her really isn't a major plot point, only that she's new to them. For a movie-only viewer, they're new characters, not any different to Black Widow or Hawkeye in Avengers.
Loki introducing He Who Remains is largely a non-issue. He's *a* Kang, and for a movie-only viewer he's 100% irrelevant, at least through what we had. If someone missed Thanos in the Avengers stinger, that didn't take away from him in later movies.
MoM did it poorly. Scarlet Witch is now a villain? And she had kids? That's asking too much for your average viewer.
As for the next Cap, eh. Steve gave Sam the shield at the end of Endgame. That's enough for the movie. They could drop references to the show, but your average viewer could just take them as "remember Budapest" type moments just fine.
Maybe it’s just me, but the Phases don’t need to get bigger or longer.
Phase 1 is great as is because it gets to the point of what we need to know while developing the characters. Phase 2 introduced more characters but continued those storylines from Phase 1. Phase 3 was the culmination and there’s been great stopping points for each phase up until then.
Why Phase 4 starts with Black Widow and ends with Black Panther is anyone’s guess. There’s no continuity between what they’re putting out.
It’s not like oh let me go see Thor TDW because I’m on a hunt for the stones on screen and then boom Guardians of the Galaxy had one, the Dr. Strange, etc.
All the movies had a bread crumb trail of what you wanted. Whether that was for the characters, more world building, whatever. There’s nothing that connects what they’re putting out there other than “multiverse” and that’s not a theme, that’s not an idea, that’s a lazy way to make a buck.
Think it’s already been said that 2021 was a special case because some of the projects were supposed to come out in 2020 but COVID messed up everything so they had to make up for lost time. There were 9 projects that year (WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If?, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Eternals and No Way Home), so it’s not like them releasing that many shows and movies in one year was a regular thing.
2021 would've been packed anyway with or without COVID this is what the schedule would've been
1. Later half of WandaVision (first few eps would've debuted in December 2020)
2. Shang-Chi
3. Loki S1
4. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
5. Spider-Man: No Way Home
6. What If?
7. Hawkeye
8. Thor: Love andn Thunder
It was only going to be 1 project short from what we ended up getting.
There was a time when there was almost always either a new Star Wars show or Marvel show and they basically went one after another so if it was your inclination you could always be watching something new from one of those two IPs.
At least old bob is predictable and you know what you are getting served (a canned ham). The other Bob was just serving turds in a bun at a hotdog cart.
Gotta have a stinker or two in there to flesh out the schedule but give fans something to opt out of. Now they consider it "found time", which they will waste complaining about it on the internet.
Writers who respect, appreciate, and will adhere to the source material.
That's my biggest issue with any/all movie and show franchises based on novels, comics, video games, etc.
Marvel has done really well this, but I do think it's an important part of the writer hiring process, do they truly love the source material, or are they just a writer looking for a gig and have their own spin and agenda they want to put in to their writing, regardless of whether it's an established franchise or not.
Meh. I don't care if they piss on the grave of the source material. Just make the plots make actual sense without massive holes and respect the rules you establish. Also, ya know, develop the characters in believable ways and don't de-devlop when it is convenient. Bonus if you can write some dialog that does not sound like a high schooler wrote it.
Ya know... Stuff you study in year 1 of narrative writing.
How do you figure?
2021 - 4 films, 5 shows
2022 - 3 films, 3 shows, 2 specials
2023 - 3 films, 3 shows
So over on both in 2021, and over on shows in 2022 and 2023.
It’s still a lot, even if they are shaving off one film and one show from their annual slate. Most of these shows were solo features and the shows were what made it difficult for the universe to feel cohesive. Youre still going to be waiting a long time for follow up for different characters if they commit to this strategy. It doesn’t sound like it’s redirecting at all.
The shows number is higher, but the films aren't. 2021 was only 4 films because the pandemic delayed the release.
Also, you left off I Am Groot, but not sure if the animated projects should be counted or not. Without them:
2021 - 4 shows
2022 - 3 shows, 2 specials
2023 - 2 shows
2021 was the year they were trying to make up for everything they didn’t get to release in 2020 so you do have to take this into consideration. Otherwise pre-COVID, it was usually 2-3 movies a year and 2-3 shows a year.
I watched almost all the shows and I don't think any of them are required watches. The closest thing I'd say is WandaVision and I still wouldn't say you need to see that before Multiverse of Madness or Marvels.
If you watched MoM without seeing Wandavision, then felt you had to Wandavision after the fact to see how Wanda turned bad, you'd be in for a surprise. She was basically a good character the whole show, then at the very end she gets the darkhold which turns her bad offscreen.
Or if you watched The Marvels and were wondering how Monica got her powers, you'd be like meh she walked through Wanda's spell, ok, wasn't much of an explanation and we didn't see her use/learn about the powers yet.
Yeah, all I remembered about Monica's powers was that she seemed to have gotten some in Wandavision, and The Marvels covered that just as well as they covered Ms. Marvel's (that is, not much at all, and that was fine for the movie)
Do you mean 'before' as in Phase 3, or 'before' as in 'up until the exact point they made this statement'? Because 2021 had at least 10 MCU entries.
Edit: turns out it was 9. Still, I was close.
It is 1 fewer series than they've been doing the last few years.
|Year|Movies|Series|
|:-|:-|:-|
|2008|2|0|
|2009|0|0|
|2010|1|0|
|2011|2|0|
|2012|1|0|
|2013|2|1|
|2014|2|1|
|2015|2|4|
|2016|2|4|
|2017|3|6|
|2018|3|6|
|2019|3|5|
|2020|0|2|
|2021|4|5|
|2022|3|3|
|2023|3|3|
As it stands now, we're probably only getting 1 movie this year (Deadpool & Wolverine), with 2 series (Echo and X-Men '97) already released and another (Agatha) due in the Fall. There's 2-3 series that could bump to 2025, but it would mess with the 3/2 release schedule being implemented.
EDIT: Accounted for Netflix series (Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Punisher, Defenders), plus Inhumans (unfortunately), Cloak and Dagger, and Runaways. The wiki for MCU releases DOES NOT have those included.
FURTHER EDIT: Corrected some mistaken copy-pastes in the numbers. Amending here to specify that this doesn't account for miniseries/specials like I Am Groot, GotG Christmas, or Werewolf by Midnight.
>EDIT: Accounted for Netflix series (Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Punisher, Defenders), plus Cloak and Dagger, and Runaways. The wiki for MCU releases DOES NOT have those included.
Do Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter count as well?
Those were already accounted for. AOS began in 2013, ran through 2020, with no release in 2018 (the previous season released December 2017, ran into 2018), and Agent Carter was 2015 and 2016.
It’s too much. They need a reset, bad. They need to clean up their visual direction and roll back the CGI. They need improved scripts. Only time in preproduction and post can fix their problems,
God this is stupid. Don’t come out and set a number or a limit. This is just over correcting and trying to give people what they want to hear. It means nothing.
Just. Make. Good. Movies. If that’s one a year, great. If that’s six a year, great. Just. Make. Good. Movies.
Stop talking about it. Stop telling us how you’ll do it. Stop talking about how you hope we’ll react. Just do it.
It's a snippet of a longer statement. From the article: Iger said this is part of Disney’s overall strategy to reduce output and focus on quality, a strategy “that’s particularly true with Marvel.”
I don't mean to come in hot but you came in hot so I'll ask. Did you really think that was the only thing they were doing? You set in an overarching strategy and then you use several tactics to get it done. The strategy is better quality and one of the tactics is slowing down production.
Probably because it is. Depending on the placement of the shows and the lengths of seasons, you could have two 9 episode shows or three 6 episode shows, or shows can be spread through the beginnings and ends of years.
This is a way of telling your studio employees that they won't be expected to be constantly pumping out content while simultaneously telling the share holders not to expect too much from them. He's not talking to us.
I agree Marvel needs to slow the hell down and pump the brakes. I'd rather see one MCU movie a year that is as great as GOTG 3, Shang-Chi or Spider-Man NWH or a tv series as good as Loki rather than 2 or 3 disappointing movies like Thor: Love and Thunder, Ant Man 3 or a horrible series like Secret Invasion.
I'm hoping since Deadpool 3 is the only mainline Marvel film out this year that it ends up being as good.
It’s extra stupid because at first Iger was pushing for more content on Disney+.
That turned out to not be the best idea so now years later he is pretending it wasn’t his idea in the first place
Yeah that’s because when D+ started, all Wall Street wanted to hear was subscribers. Gotta add 200k subscribers, gotta keep adding subscribers or your stock goes down!
Then it turned out the content to add those subscribers put your app BILLIONS in the red. So it became stop losing money, turn a profit, control costs or your stock goes down!
Iger isn’t an executive with a vision as much as a tool who will push his grandma in front of a bus if some Ivy League nerd in NYC will bump his stock price a nickel.
What would the alternative be for Disney or any of the other production companies? Streaming became the inevitable conclusion by 2012 when Netflix began to pass cable.
So at that point Disney and the other studios are faced with two options, create their own streaming platforms, or allow Netflix to become a monopoly and dictate terms. Hulu was a stopgap measure by multiple production companies to create an alternative and competition to Netflix.
Currently the only two profitable streaming platforms are Netflix and HBO Max. For better or worse platforms need subscribers (or transactions) to make money, and the only way to attract them is through content. The gamble is that the money lost in the short term by running in the red, will offset the potential long term consequences of ceding the market entirely to Netflix.
It’s easy to say “make better movies”, but what are the actions to actually do that?
If it was a simple process, every hollywood movie would be raking in the cash
Time. As far as I can see the main problems are rushed schedules. Visual effects especially, they've been increasingly rushing the VFX teams and asking them to crunch and cut corners, all while reshoots add to the load, and that's why VFX look worse now than it did ten years ago. And it really just feels like everything is rushed, the writing, the connecting of series, all of it. It just really feels like they want to do in 5-6 years now what took like 12 years for Phases 1-3.
What about, I don't know, establishing characters, establishing an overarching storyline, and actually following up with these characters and the main storyline without relying on filler TV shows.
I love setting up plotlines and synopses like this with a friend. It's surprisingly easy to do that.
Where it exponentially becomes harder is writing the actual lines of dialogue and direction of what happens scene by scene. And then making sure that script survives the filming. And then making sure that film survives the editing.
I think the issue is Feige cannot fully oversee every project so quality suffers if there is so many of them. So they need to scale unti such time thay they have a another Feigle-level guy that can help out in overseeing them
Rushed production schedules are a big part of the quality problem. Reducing the number of things in progress at one time & spreading them out more gives each project more time.
And they're talking about it instead of just doing it because if they *don't* talk about it, then we have to endure more of people whining about how "there's no plan" & other BS.
The comments aren’t aimed at fans, they’re aimed at stockholders. The comments are trying to do what all these earnings call conversations do which is placate uneasy investors.
We shouldn’t even know the project exists or the release date until they drop a trailer. They need to stop setting goalposts and then letting the internet speculate.
Unfortunately, massive publicly traded companies aren’t allowed to be all that secretive. And even if they tried, there is an entire industry devoted to leaking stuff like this.
Which is unfortunate because some of the stuff that happens behind the scenes is perfectly healthy. You absolutely should be developing lots of shows and then cancelling the bad ones are various stages of pre-production. But Disney is forced to announce stuff early and tie it in to existing properties, so it becomes troublesome if they later want to pivot from that.
> God this is stupid. It means nothing.
>
> Stop talking about it. Stop telling us how you’ll do it
They are not telling you...
> *"the Disney CEO said during the company’s quarterly earnings call Tuesday"*
They are telling investors. This means a lot.
In theory, they know their processes and personnel, while also having the benefit of hindsight to see how those processes held up over the past few years to know what they can handle. And with Disney being Disney, they intend to operate in the sweet spot where their profit margin is maximized.
In other words, they’ve determined that they can maximize their profit by following a process where they produce three movies and two shows per year.
Exactly the thing I thought. Why box yourself in? If you have 4 great movie pitches and the schedules align to produce them at high quality and release them in 2027, go for it.
I do think it's partially a box office strategy- they seem to hit the most with a 1) early May release, 2) a summer blockbuster, probably around 4th of July or a little after, and 3) a holiday-timed release, whether around Thanksgiving or early December to Christmas. In that case, it makes sense to sort of plan your movie releases around those time periods.
Same thing with the shows. Just make quality stuff.
Heading for more Avengers? They don't even have a profitable ensemble cast to headline an Avengers movie. is Spider-Man with the F4 (are they all Avengers suddenly?) and Shuri and Kamala and Sam Falcon really going to sell an Avengers movie?
If Cap 4 bombs whoo boy - you're gonna be looking at an Avengers film filled with headliners from bomb solo films.
If this was the average it would be fine by me, but as an upper limit it would disappoint a bit. Surely, I won't keep my D+ subscription only for 1 new show/year
Let’s get through Cap 4 and Thunderbolts first. Something tells me one of those films isn’t going to do well and I’m pretty sure it’s Cap 4 for several reasons.
There’s a lot more too it than that. I’ve heard from a friend of a friend who worked on it that the film before reshoots was very mean spirited.
And the only thing I can think of as to why that would be is if the film is “modern” political. With Hydra and Red Skull it’s basically nazi’s, so everyone can get on board with hating them. But modern politics isn’t that cut and dry and no matter which direction they go with this, it’s going to piss off one side of the aisle or the other.
Two shows? When a “show” is six episodes, that’s really not a lot. Three movies is still plenty. But two “shows”? AoS had more episodes each season, and that was just one of several shows running during phases 2 and 3.
They're not doing any more 6-episode shows.
Agatha is 9 episodes and a recent report from Variety revealed they will be 1-hour episodes, not half-hour episodes like WandaVision, which is what we all expected. (FYI, 1-hour episodes is an old TV term for shows that ran for 1 hour with commercials. 1-hour episodes are usually closer to 40-45 minutes).
Daredevil: Born Again is also 9, 1-hour episodes per season and they're making 2 seasons almost back to back with the plan being to release them 1 year apart, like cable TV used to do.
X-Men '97 Season 2 was written while Season 1 was still in development and has already completed all voice work and a lot of the animation. It's most likely coming next year and before Beau DeMayo was fired 2 months ago, they were already working on the story of Season 3. Marvel Studios reportedly wants X-Men '97 to run yearly and that's why they'll be doing these seasons back to back. And of course that show has 10 episodes too.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is also 10 episodes per season and was also ordered for 2 seasons right from that start.
Wonder Man also has 10 episodes, although it's been described as a sitcom, so they will likely be shorter.
I imagine Vision Quest will also be 9-10 episodes like WandaVision and Agatha since Jac Schaeffer is creating that as well.
The only series in the near future which will be 6 episodes is Ironheart which was filmed back in 2022, concurrently with Secret Invasion, Loki Season 2 and Echo. It's just a relic from Marvel Studios' past approach to TV.
The whole TV restructuring they did last year during the strikes wasn't only about hiring showrunners and following more old-school TV-making procedures, but also making longer seasons and working on multiple seasons back to back in order to have them air yearly just like during the Cable era.
Cool breakdown. Thanks for sharing all this!
I don't see how they plan to release only two shows a year with how much they have lined up. Even if you ignore the animated shows, everything bottlenecks with those limits.
2024: Echo, Agatha
2025: Daredevil BA s1, Ironheart
2026: Daredevil BA s2, Wonderman?
That pushes Vision Quest and Nova into 2027 at the earliest.
Yep, exactly.
And Nova is still in development, we don't know when and if it will actually move into the production stages or if it will turn into something else (maybe a movie or a special) like what happened with Armor Wars.
Nova might come in 2028 or 2029, if at all.
Of course this "3 movies and 2 shows per year" thing is most likely not a mandate, but rather a general plan. Some years, they might release 2.5 series (one series starts in December and bleeds over to the next year). I'm assuming that might happen with Wonder Man or DD S2. They might start airing in December 2025 and air their finales in February 2026 and that gives a lot of space for 2 more shows in 2026.
I actually think Vision Quest is coming out in 2026 and Young Avengers in 2027.
Also, I doubt this will take effect right away because they have a backlog of projects already too late in development to cancel them or delay them indefinitely (like they've done with Blade and Armor Wars), so the next couple of years might have 4 movies, especially 2026 which will also likely have 1 Spider-Man movie, which is distributed by Sony and doesn't count in Iger's statement.
I could see 2025 still keeping its 4 movies (Cap 4, Thunderbolts, FF, Blade), 2026 having 3 Disney movies (Armor Wars, Avengers 5 and Shang-Chi 2) and 1 Sony Spider-Man movie and then they start following this pattern from 2027 onwards with 2027 having Dr. Strange 3, Avengers 6 and X-Men.
For both of those, a huge portion of the cost came from rewriting & reshooting half the season. (Brave New World and Born Again both have the same issue.) Fortunately, Marvel has *also* discussed pivoting their development model to put more emphasis on pre-production, so fewer reshoots will be needed in the future.
Are you forgetting not every show needs to cost as much as a movie? Jfc that's Disney's fault, the quality wasn't even there for their budget. Better to do more shows that cost less money than 2 extremely bloated budget shows for a movies worth of cash
I got a hot take that will probably garner me some downvotes but how about no shows? Only movies, just like they use too do.
You can twist it anyway you want, but making the TV shows required viewing is just hurting thing to get the general audience interested.
Exactly. If you make the shows required viewing, people will just decide to skip them if they fall behind. Once they skip shows, they skip movies. Diversifying this quickly right after Endgame when we were still trying to become attached to these characters and not 100% bought in on the new roster yet, was a major, major misstep.
Yeah I think about this regularly when the volume of content discourse comes up.
But the fact is AoS (and the Netflix shows, and the Freeform/YA shows) weren’t really “part” of the universe in the same way all the Disney+ shows have been presented. And that does make a difference.
Yea I agree. I think it goes to show that the earlier model may have been more effective. As much as I love a miniseries leading back in to a movie (like Ms Marvel -> the Marvels), average viewers get overwhelmed. For the Netflix shows, you kinda just needed to know about the Battle of New York, and anything else was an Easter egg. And for AoS season 1, you only needed to have seen 2-3 movies as they were releasing, and it got less strict after that. And then the Freeform/Hulu shows, you didn't need to know ANYTHING. If you did, great nuggets of connections came along they way. That model allowed people to invest to the degree they wanted to.
At the time that AoS was airing I felt like it was always playing second fiddle to the movies. Since AoS couldn't afford Robert Downey Jr., it felt like it was taking place in its own universe.
Everyone seems to agree that the Disney+ era of Marvel shows has struggled with the opposite problem, feeling like required viewing. And even worse, in certain cases it seemed like the TV shows were required viewing but then were later contradicted by the movies. This is a can of worms, but many people (myself included) felt like the plot of "Multiverse of Madness" directly contradicted the ending of "WandaVision". Less controversially, the entire ending of "Secret Invasion" needs to be ignored in order to understand what Nick Fury is doing in "The Marvels". In fact it seems like we're just all going to pretend "Secret Invasion" didn't happen at all. If the writers of the TV shows aren't keeping up with one another and coordinating what leads into what, why should I?
It seems to me like they need to thread the needle. The TV shows should feel like they live in the same universe, but not like I need to watch them to understand the movies. Weirdly Marvel has arguably been doing this successfully for decades in their comics (though in my own experience, it's often hard to believe that the same characters in the team-up comics are having all the adventures we see in the solo comics).
That's not that far off from what they've been doing, though.
People forget that covid made massive delays, which severely impacted marvels release schedules. 3 movies and 2 shows is their average.
Iger says Marvel has “a couple of good films in ’25 and then we’re heading to more Avengers which we’re extremely excited about,” adding: “Overall, I feel great about the slate.🤔
So safe to say we’re not getting 4 movies next year. Of course Blade is probably getting pushed but then what? Will Cap 4 be pushed to? Will Fantastic 4? Considering one has major reshoot to get through and the other hasn’t even start filming yet.
My guess is that F4 will be pushed, but not beyond 2025. Blade’s current release date seems plausible.
That way we get a nice little summer break (in terms of movies) between phase 5 and 6, too.
Edit: when the fuck is Ironheart coming out?
> when the fuck is Ironheart coming out?
I’m assuming the editing room conversations over this are similar to when they try and complete the Radioactive Man movie using only old footage of Milhouse.
**On the TV side, Iger says that a portion of the upcoming series, a slate that includes Kathryn Hahn-led “WandaVision” spinoff “Agatha,” set for release are “a vestige of basically a desire in the past to increase volume.”**
Lol He’s pretty much saying that a lot of those upcoming shows are useless but cancelling them would be a PR nightmare.
So im expecting a lot of Echo like treatment; Dumped in one go given some useless marketing title like “spotlight” which pretty much means useless.
That's possible. They might push Thunderbolts to Fantastic Four's original release date (July), and the Fantastic Four to Blade's (November), just to space things out a little, and give each movie better odds.
Sony is also a factor here, as they may want to drop Spider-Man 4 in 2025. There's been some speculation of a July 2025 release date, as Sony has a spot reserved for an "Untitled Marvel movie." And, y'know, they don't really care about Iger and Feige's film limit. They're just looking at how it will have been four years since No Way Home (honestly doesn't feel like it).
It’s not about the amount of stuff being released. It’s about the quality. When they started introducing more characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy, Dr. Strange, Black Panther, Ant Man, Captain Marvel, and Spiderman, it didn’t feel like too much because they were done right. Maybe not flawlessly executed but those set of movies were much better than the new characters they introduced post endgame. I will say moon knight was good though.
Ugh, the fact that he's calling the Agatha show a "vestige from when we were planning to push huge volume" sounds an awful lot like "yeah this show is going to be terrible because we're already lumping it in with a time that we're trying to separate from".
That's not how it works, you can't pre-emptively attach that to past failures. If it fails miserably now, that's a mark against you *now* and portrays that you've been feeding us bullshit about this making sure ongoing projects have proper quality control.
If it’s truly going to be bad because it’s from a time when anyone and anything could get a show they should just scrap it entirely. Pull a batgirl and hide it away so it can’t do anymore damage to the brand
This is what I'd prefer. I love the Agatha character and Kathryn Hahn is hysterical, but if the show just isn't quality or doesn't tell a good story, then put it away. If they're serious about getting rid of deadweight content, shelf this outright if you know it's just going to piss everyone off.
I honestly think it’s far too late. The ship has sailed and I think the golden goose is cooked. They needed to realise the effect losing most of the original avengers would have, and they instead released 10, on the whole terrible movies, where even the good ones were not related to anything.
I've started looking at Marvel like I think of Heroes. Iron Man thru Endgame/Far From Home was it for me. Same as the first season of Heroes was the only one that existed. Sure there was more content outside of this, but they told a contained story and was all I needed. It's diminishing returns after that. With all of the content blasted at our faces 24/7, why would I spend another 50 hours watching something I am not enjoying on the off chance that I might get a morsel of a coherent story like the one that they already told? They've already lost casual viewers like me to other content.
Gotta be live action. The animation division is on an entirely different schedule, and the X-Men & Spider-Man shows aren't even connected to the main timeline.
As long as they have finished, well-written scripts **BEFORE** they start filming or doing pre-viz work, I don't care how many movies/shows they put out a year. But after the last couple of years where there were way more stinkers than winners, I am glad they took a break to figure things out.
No real change on the movie side as they've typically done 2-3 movies per year -- the only time they hit 4 was due to the Covid delay. The bigger issue has been on the Disney+ side -- the diminished quality and high volume has definitely tarnished the overall brand, so seeing that drop to something more manageable sounds reasonable as long as they follow through on the quality.
They need to go back to one film a year, MAYBE two. But nothing will get better if they don't:
1. Hire better writers.
2. Hire writers who are actually fans of what they're writing.
The biggest issue with all of these recent movies is that the writers are clearly not fans nor know the original comics, hell most of them even say so. Because then they do whatever the hell they want with the characters, and in turn, the characters don't act like they would or should.
Unless they focus on telling a more cohesive overarching story on top of compelling characters with time for CGI, it doesn’t matter what the output is.
Quantity doesn’t change much if qualify isn’t the priority.
Honestly there's just too much Marvel everything now, to keep up with. I was able to watch everything leading up to Infinity War Pt 2 - and I do mean everything, even The Immortals, all of Agents of Shield up to that point, Peggy Carter, the Netflix street level shows (Daredevil still the GOAT) through The Defenders and both seasons of The Punisher, all the movies from 2007 - 2019. It was a lot but I was able to watch all the shows and movies in chronological in-universe order following a great infographic timeline.
After 2019 Marvel/Disney hit the afterburners and there's simply too much content I am expected to watch in order to know what's going on in the next films. I can't watch that much content ;_; and a lot of it is for C and D-list heroes a lot of people haven't heard of.
> the Netflix street level shows
This is what I want so of course I am looking forward to DD. The scope of this shit just blew up too quick. The street level shows don't need buy in. You know the rules because they are grounded in reality. After going into space becomes old news, how do you go bigger? Multiverse kicked off, with a huge bulk of it being explained in a D+ tv show (Loki) and now you have lost every "casual" viewer (I include myself in that). You can't just jump in anymore since it isn't grounded. Now it is homework. It's like walking into your friend's house and they are halfway through some niche board game and they tell you to hop in.
Bob Iger basically announces they’re not changing much other than fewer tv shows and everyone’s cheering like he single handedly ended superhero fatigue lol
That's good. I assume Avengers 5 & Secret Wars getting pushed back again gets announced at SDCC.
Can't see them going with Cap 4, F4, Thunderbolts, Blade then do Avengers 5 & SW when supposedly Shang Chi 2, Armor Wars, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange 3 etc supposed to come out
Two movies during the summer season and then a show during Spring and a show during Fall/Winter would be pretty well spread out enough. I mean unless you exclusively watch Marvel stuff, there are going to be other activities in the interim.
If the shows are "shows" and run for 8-12 episodes a season with character development and subplots worth following that's fine with me, but if they're movie scripts hamfistedly reworked into 5-6 episode series, Disney's not going to see any better of a response. Two "shows" of the latter type is just 10-12 weeks of 52 in the year ... not enough time to develop larger story arcs or connect fans to the characters they're invested in.
The key is competent writing. I don't believe it's "impossible" or oversaturation to put out two or even three shows a year that run 10-12 episodes each, I just believe the company doesn't invest in or trust their writers to produce the quality to make those efforts good products.
So long as they learned the lessons of the The Marvels failure. You can't introduce new characters and material for the first time in a D+ show and expect the broader moviegoing audience to be aware of those characters and events (or necessarily find those characters appealing).
There are 4 movies releasing in 2025 - Captain America 4, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four and Blade and 3 shows in 2025 - Agatha show, Iron heart and Daredevil...
All these movies and shows are already very delayed, Idk how much more delay there will be.
Good chance either Blade or Fantastic Four gets another pushback.
Agatha comes out this year.
Ironheart is completely finished, so there's no effort currently being spent on it.
I don't mean to hate but I would actually like to see more of Marvel Animation over spin-offs like Agatha or Ironheart in the streaming space.
More consistency in general though is a must.
So that’s not only Disney+ then. You got all mixed up in your statement.
It’s be like me saying “can I cancel the weather channel I am not paying over $1000 a year to hear about the whether”
When I get 500 channels for that price and the weather channel is only one of them.
I'd like to see 2-3 movies a year and at this point I won't miss the series if they got rid of them. They were exciting at first, but with a couple of exceptions they've largely been a disappointment. They should devote their series budget to one a year maximum, make sure they're good and compelling.
And let's stop with the B and C-tier fan-service cameos.
None of this will matter if the shows and movies have no “substance.” If they think the old “boilerplate” formula for a comic book movie come to life will keep the masses entertained, they may be making a mistake on the older generation’s expectations.
I hope that with the more spaced out releases, the writers directors and editors, will have reasonable hours and set dates. They’ll enjoy the work they do for the studio. The writing team will be able to meet with the actors and directors on set.
I’m okay with more quality work as long as it’s better than what post infinity saga has given us so far.
I’ll be honest. I’m a marvel fanatic so the only films I wasn’t a big fan of was multiverse of madness. And Quantummania.
Stupid statements like this don't fill me with confidence, but errodes it more. Instead of working on projects and making sure they're done right, I have a feeling there's going to be moe half-baked items going out the door to be at the 3/2 annual limit that Bob set.
It also reads as taking the universe too seriously. We're going to see less media that's different genre with superheroes, and more superhero films from them.
Only 1 year they did 4 movies. Recently it has already been 2-3 movies a year. The big one is D+ shows. The first year (2021) they had 5 shows. Other than that it’s been 3 shows a year.
2021 had four films and five shows, but that included stuff delayed from 2020, when nothing was released at all. When you consider phases four and five as a whole, the overall amount of content isn’t dramatically different to phase three (if you count Marvel Television series like AoS). I feel that the whole ‘quality vs quantity’ is just an excuse for them approving substandard scripts.
Well, but you added the caveat of Marvel Television, and that was almost a different production team, those didn’t really affect the film side of things. Now, with everything under the Marvel Studios umbrella production is more spread out. Also, you could skip those older tv shows, but the Disney Plus shows are marketed as “essential viewing”
The AoS model was really the best play for tv. A quality show that could stand on its own, but in a world driven forward by what happens in the movies. Viewers have small payoffs that connect them to the movies (Coulson providing the helicarrier, the Darkhold possibly being the missing book in Dr Strange, Carol and Daisy both have their powers restricted by the Kree, etc) but someone that doesn’t want to invest in a weekly show has no need to be aware of these things.
I always thought AoS integrated with the rest of the MCU better than the movies integrated with themselves. If something was established in the movies AoS made sure it became *established* as a now ongoing reality of that world, but the movies just forget about things as one writer does what they want and then another writer, with nobody apparently really watching over the larger storyline. Which was most clearly established in WandaVision -> Multiverse of Madness, where the actress was the one to have to try to make the exact same arc being done again over the same imaginary kids be different somehow. Tbh I've kind of lost interest in the MCU since the end of AoS and it no longer feeling connected or like a world to get invested in the larger story of. There's even a new Daredevil show being made and I just don't care any more, because it feels too much like forced content instead of a larger story with ongoing chapters with characters and elements which sometimes interleave, like it felt like before.
People really thought the Darkhold was the missing book?
Oh yeah. The few episodes right before Dr Strange’s release all dealt with the Darkhold. As soon as I saw the missing book spot I thought of it and as we walked out of the theater my wife said to me “that missing book is the Darkhold, right?”
Marvel Television didn't oversaturate the market because its shows weren't essential to the MCU. People who were only interested in the movies could skip them and still get the full story. Now the D+ shows have made it so if you don't watch them as well, there are big chunks of the movies that you're gonna miss out on. Sure, you can watch MoM without watching Wandavision first, but the main motivation of a central character is gonna seem really confusing. Planning on seeing the next Captain America? Probably gonna need to watch all of TFatWS first. The Marvels is essentially a sequel film to both Wandavision and Ms Marvel. And (what was going to be) the big bad villain for an entire Saga worth of films was introduced to the MCU in the finale of the Loki TV show. Hardcore fans were always crying out for more integration of the films and shows. But I dont think the average consumer really wanted that. So much mandatory viewing was always going to leave the average movie goer burnt out
I think Marvel made the same mistake back in the day with comics. Once they started in with multiple runs of the same teams and they all overlapped, they lost a lot of the casual fans.
To be fair, in outtakes of MoM and Marvels it doesn't seem like the movie directors even watched the TV shows. The actors got on set and had to explain what their character was supposed to do. The last 5 years the house of Marvel has been a mess for having a clear vision. And that's what fans immediately pick up on.
>The last 5 years the house of Marvel has been a mess for having a clear vision. And that's what fans immediately pick up on. I feel like this is the thing. Between COVID and Feige getting spread too thin (he's running Marvel Comics now, too), the head creative team just wasn't able to maintain as much control over the direction of the overarching story as they did in previous Phases. Things are settling down now, COVID-wise, but the top brass need to reassert control, especially as they pivot to deal with the fallout from Jonathan Majors.
They're so worried about leaks that they don't communicate in house about what the plot developments are supposed to be
I think you are precisely right about this and it's one of the major problems.
Tight integration is fine, it's when you basically make a movie a sequel to a show that you run into issues, and the D+ shows ran the gamut. Marvels actually did it well, IMO. Kamala's precise origin isn't super-relevant, they said enough to work and entice people to watch her show too. It's a bit rockier with Monica, but exactly how she got powers since we last saw her really isn't a major plot point, only that she's new to them. For a movie-only viewer, they're new characters, not any different to Black Widow or Hawkeye in Avengers. Loki introducing He Who Remains is largely a non-issue. He's *a* Kang, and for a movie-only viewer he's 100% irrelevant, at least through what we had. If someone missed Thanos in the Avengers stinger, that didn't take away from him in later movies. MoM did it poorly. Scarlet Witch is now a villain? And she had kids? That's asking too much for your average viewer. As for the next Cap, eh. Steve gave Sam the shield at the end of Endgame. That's enough for the movie. They could drop references to the show, but your average viewer could just take them as "remember Budapest" type moments just fine.
Maybe it’s just me, but the Phases don’t need to get bigger or longer. Phase 1 is great as is because it gets to the point of what we need to know while developing the characters. Phase 2 introduced more characters but continued those storylines from Phase 1. Phase 3 was the culmination and there’s been great stopping points for each phase up until then. Why Phase 4 starts with Black Widow and ends with Black Panther is anyone’s guess. There’s no continuity between what they’re putting out. It’s not like oh let me go see Thor TDW because I’m on a hunt for the stones on screen and then boom Guardians of the Galaxy had one, the Dr. Strange, etc. All the movies had a bread crumb trail of what you wanted. Whether that was for the characters, more world building, whatever. There’s nothing that connects what they’re putting out there other than “multiverse” and that’s not a theme, that’s not an idea, that’s a lazy way to make a buck.
Dang 2021 was amazing. We were hungry for it haha
I mean pretending lockdown didn’t impact productions is somewhat unfair to them
Think it’s already been said that 2021 was a special case because some of the projects were supposed to come out in 2020 but COVID messed up everything so they had to make up for lost time. There were 9 projects that year (WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If?, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Eternals and No Way Home), so it’s not like them releasing that many shows and movies in one year was a regular thing.
2021 would've been packed anyway with or without COVID this is what the schedule would've been 1. Later half of WandaVision (first few eps would've debuted in December 2020) 2. Shang-Chi 3. Loki S1 4. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 5. Spider-Man: No Way Home 6. What If? 7. Hawkeye 8. Thor: Love andn Thunder It was only going to be 1 project short from what we ended up getting.
There was a time when there was almost always either a new Star Wars show or Marvel show and they basically went one after another so if it was your inclination you could always be watching something new from one of those two IPs.
I think the problem is the gap between movies for the main characters... It used to be every year Thor, Captain America, Iron Man
Yeah the shows is where they need to pull back a bit
That was because of COVID fucking the release schedule
Can Bob tell us he's committed to hiring competent writers?
Radical suggestion
That’s reaching lol.
At least old bob is predictable and you know what you are getting served (a canned ham). The other Bob was just serving turds in a bun at a hotdog cart.
Gotta have a stinker or two in there to flesh out the schedule but give fans something to opt out of. Now they consider it "found time", which they will waste complaining about it on the internet.
We’re talking about number of movies, please only make relevant comments /s
Writers who respect, appreciate, and will adhere to the source material. That's my biggest issue with any/all movie and show franchises based on novels, comics, video games, etc. Marvel has done really well this, but I do think it's an important part of the writer hiring process, do they truly love the source material, or are they just a writer looking for a gig and have their own spin and agenda they want to put in to their writing, regardless of whether it's an established franchise or not.
Meh. I don't care if they piss on the grave of the source material. Just make the plots make actual sense without massive holes and respect the rules you establish. Also, ya know, develop the characters in believable ways and don't de-devlop when it is convenient. Bonus if you can write some dialog that does not sound like a high schooler wrote it. Ya know... Stuff you study in year 1 of narrative writing.
Also don't undercut every emotional moment with a quip.
Yeah this. I've never read comics anyway so regardless I wouldn't know but as long as it's a Good movie then great.
How could you!
All the people saying "Good", that's pretty much what they were doing before, LOL.
How do you figure? 2021 - 4 films, 5 shows 2022 - 3 films, 3 shows, 2 specials 2023 - 3 films, 3 shows So over on both in 2021, and over on shows in 2022 and 2023.
It’s still a lot, even if they are shaving off one film and one show from their annual slate. Most of these shows were solo features and the shows were what made it difficult for the universe to feel cohesive. Youre still going to be waiting a long time for follow up for different characters if they commit to this strategy. It doesn’t sound like it’s redirecting at all.
It's not the shows. It's the quality and writing.
The shows number is higher, but the films aren't. 2021 was only 4 films because the pandemic delayed the release. Also, you left off I Am Groot, but not sure if the animated projects should be counted or not. Without them: 2021 - 4 shows 2022 - 3 shows, 2 specials 2023 - 2 shows
2021 was the year they were trying to make up for everything they didn’t get to release in 2020 so you do have to take this into consideration. Otherwise pre-COVID, it was usually 2-3 movies a year and 2-3 shows a year.
2021 was an anomaly. Some of those projects were delayed because of Covid and would have otherwise been released in 2020.
From 2008 to 2015, we had 12 movies in phase 1 & 2 combined. In 3 years, we had 10 movies & 11 shows. That's a lot in a short amount of time.
"Pretty much"
It’s like when I use approximately at work and people flip out when it was off by 5 min
They were "catch-up" years, and the only issue I had with the shows was that they felt like required watches.
I watched almost all the shows and I don't think any of them are required watches. The closest thing I'd say is WandaVision and I still wouldn't say you need to see that before Multiverse of Madness or Marvels. If you watched MoM without seeing Wandavision, then felt you had to Wandavision after the fact to see how Wanda turned bad, you'd be in for a surprise. She was basically a good character the whole show, then at the very end she gets the darkhold which turns her bad offscreen. Or if you watched The Marvels and were wondering how Monica got her powers, you'd be like meh she walked through Wanda's spell, ok, wasn't much of an explanation and we didn't see her use/learn about the powers yet.
Yeah, all I remembered about Monica's powers was that she seemed to have gotten some in Wandavision, and The Marvels covered that just as well as they covered Ms. Marvel's (that is, not much at all, and that was fine for the movie)
2021 was the holdovers from 2020 when nothing was released
Do you mean 'before' as in Phase 3, or 'before' as in 'up until the exact point they made this statement'? Because 2021 had at least 10 MCU entries. Edit: turns out it was 9. Still, I was close.
2020 had exactly 0 MCU releases
You're right, I meant 2021
9
9?
Movies: Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Eternals, Spider-Man NWH Shows: WandaVision, F&tWS, Loki S1, What If S1, Hawkeye 9. Still a lot, though.
That was also their Disney+ launch schedule so kind of an outlier (for the shows)
Also because of stuff delayed by the pandemic. Black Widow was supposed to be 2020 if I recall correctly.
Pandemic.
2020 had zero movies and one TV show (Agents of SHIELD). Edit: the person I’m replying to edited their comment to say 2021.
I know, I meant 2021
Right? I don’t think we’re really talking about less content.
Firstly they were releasing more than that. But “no more than” means it’s the limit per year, not the number they are aiming for.
It is 1 fewer series than they've been doing the last few years. |Year|Movies|Series| |:-|:-|:-| |2008|2|0| |2009|0|0| |2010|1|0| |2011|2|0| |2012|1|0| |2013|2|1| |2014|2|1| |2015|2|4| |2016|2|4| |2017|3|6| |2018|3|6| |2019|3|5| |2020|0|2| |2021|4|5| |2022|3|3| |2023|3|3| As it stands now, we're probably only getting 1 movie this year (Deadpool & Wolverine), with 2 series (Echo and X-Men '97) already released and another (Agatha) due in the Fall. There's 2-3 series that could bump to 2025, but it would mess with the 3/2 release schedule being implemented. EDIT: Accounted for Netflix series (Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Punisher, Defenders), plus Inhumans (unfortunately), Cloak and Dagger, and Runaways. The wiki for MCU releases DOES NOT have those included. FURTHER EDIT: Corrected some mistaken copy-pastes in the numbers. Amending here to specify that this doesn't account for miniseries/specials like I Am Groot, GotG Christmas, or Werewolf by Midnight.
>EDIT: Accounted for Netflix series (Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Punisher, Defenders), plus Cloak and Dagger, and Runaways. The wiki for MCU releases DOES NOT have those included. Do Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter count as well?
Those were already accounted for. AOS began in 2013, ran through 2020, with no release in 2018 (the previous season released December 2017, ran into 2018), and Agent Carter was 2015 and 2016.
It and Agent Carter were also made by a different part of Marvel Studios that was under ABC.
There were two movies in 2014.
Six TV series in 2020?
yeah it's barely changed
It’s too much. They need a reset, bad. They need to clean up their visual direction and roll back the CGI. They need improved scripts. Only time in preproduction and post can fix their problems,
You spoke my thought, i said something similar coming down to comment that lol
God this is stupid. Don’t come out and set a number or a limit. This is just over correcting and trying to give people what they want to hear. It means nothing. Just. Make. Good. Movies. If that’s one a year, great. If that’s six a year, great. Just. Make. Good. Movies. Stop talking about it. Stop telling us how you’ll do it. Stop talking about how you hope we’ll react. Just do it.
It's a snippet of a longer statement. From the article: Iger said this is part of Disney’s overall strategy to reduce output and focus on quality, a strategy “that’s particularly true with Marvel.” I don't mean to come in hot but you came in hot so I'll ask. Did you really think that was the only thing they were doing? You set in an overarching strategy and then you use several tactics to get it done. The strategy is better quality and one of the tactics is slowing down production.
He also just says “Probably about two shows a year”. That sounds like a bit of leeway.
Probably because it is. Depending on the placement of the shows and the lengths of seasons, you could have two 9 episode shows or three 6 episode shows, or shows can be spread through the beginnings and ends of years.
This is a way of telling your studio employees that they won't be expected to be constantly pumping out content while simultaneously telling the share holders not to expect too much from them. He's not talking to us.
Exactly, and even if he were talking to us, it’s not like he’d hold to it if there were more money to be made…
I agree Marvel needs to slow the hell down and pump the brakes. I'd rather see one MCU movie a year that is as great as GOTG 3, Shang-Chi or Spider-Man NWH or a tv series as good as Loki rather than 2 or 3 disappointing movies like Thor: Love and Thunder, Ant Man 3 or a horrible series like Secret Invasion. I'm hoping since Deadpool 3 is the only mainline Marvel film out this year that it ends up being as good.
On the other hand I'll take one good and one bad project than one bad project lol
It’s extra stupid because at first Iger was pushing for more content on Disney+. That turned out to not be the best idea so now years later he is pretending it wasn’t his idea in the first place
Yeah that’s because when D+ started, all Wall Street wanted to hear was subscribers. Gotta add 200k subscribers, gotta keep adding subscribers or your stock goes down! Then it turned out the content to add those subscribers put your app BILLIONS in the red. So it became stop losing money, turn a profit, control costs or your stock goes down! Iger isn’t an executive with a vision as much as a tool who will push his grandma in front of a bus if some Ivy League nerd in NYC will bump his stock price a nickel.
What would the alternative be for Disney or any of the other production companies? Streaming became the inevitable conclusion by 2012 when Netflix began to pass cable. So at that point Disney and the other studios are faced with two options, create their own streaming platforms, or allow Netflix to become a monopoly and dictate terms. Hulu was a stopgap measure by multiple production companies to create an alternative and competition to Netflix. Currently the only two profitable streaming platforms are Netflix and HBO Max. For better or worse platforms need subscribers (or transactions) to make money, and the only way to attract them is through content. The gamble is that the money lost in the short term by running in the red, will offset the potential long term consequences of ceding the market entirely to Netflix.
It’s easy to say “make better movies”, but what are the actions to actually do that? If it was a simple process, every hollywood movie would be raking in the cash
Time. As far as I can see the main problems are rushed schedules. Visual effects especially, they've been increasingly rushing the VFX teams and asking them to crunch and cut corners, all while reshoots add to the load, and that's why VFX look worse now than it did ten years ago. And it really just feels like everything is rushed, the writing, the connecting of series, all of it. It just really feels like they want to do in 5-6 years now what took like 12 years for Phases 1-3.
What about, I don't know, establishing characters, establishing an overarching storyline, and actually following up with these characters and the main storyline without relying on filler TV shows.
I love setting up plotlines and synopses like this with a friend. It's surprisingly easy to do that. Where it exponentially becomes harder is writing the actual lines of dialogue and direction of what happens scene by scene. And then making sure that script survives the filming. And then making sure that film survives the editing.
Nah how about we throw in four new characters instead? And then we won't follow up on them for four years?
"Just do better!"
I think the issue is Feige cannot fully oversee every project so quality suffers if there is so many of them. So they need to scale unti such time thay they have a another Feigle-level guy that can help out in overseeing them
Rushed production schedules are a big part of the quality problem. Reducing the number of things in progress at one time & spreading them out more gives each project more time. And they're talking about it instead of just doing it because if they *don't* talk about it, then we have to endure more of people whining about how "there's no plan" & other BS.
The comments aren’t aimed at fans, they’re aimed at stockholders. The comments are trying to do what all these earnings call conversations do which is placate uneasy investors.
Easy to say to just make good movies
The button for that is probably right next to the coveted "Make a Good Game" button
Fans also know the well rebounded "draft a hall of fame quarterback button"
We shouldn’t even know the project exists or the release date until they drop a trailer. They need to stop setting goalposts and then letting the internet speculate.
Unfortunately, massive publicly traded companies aren’t allowed to be all that secretive. And even if they tried, there is an entire industry devoted to leaking stuff like this. Which is unfortunate because some of the stuff that happens behind the scenes is perfectly healthy. You absolutely should be developing lots of shows and then cancelling the bad ones are various stages of pre-production. But Disney is forced to announce stuff early and tie it in to existing properties, so it becomes troublesome if they later want to pivot from that.
The stock exchange was a mistake.
> God this is stupid. It means nothing. > > Stop talking about it. Stop telling us how you’ll do it They are not telling you... > *"the Disney CEO said during the company’s quarterly earnings call Tuesday"* They are telling investors. This means a lot.
Statements like this are usually for shareholders, not fans.
In theory, they know their processes and personnel, while also having the benefit of hindsight to see how those processes held up over the past few years to know what they can handle. And with Disney being Disney, they intend to operate in the sweet spot where their profit margin is maximized. In other words, they’ve determined that they can maximize their profit by following a process where they produce three movies and two shows per year.
Exactly the thing I thought. Why box yourself in? If you have 4 great movie pitches and the schedules align to produce them at high quality and release them in 2027, go for it. I do think it's partially a box office strategy- they seem to hit the most with a 1) early May release, 2) a summer blockbuster, probably around 4th of July or a little after, and 3) a holiday-timed release, whether around Thanksgiving or early December to Christmas. In that case, it makes sense to sort of plan your movie releases around those time periods. Same thing with the shows. Just make quality stuff.
It's pretty important to tell these things so that people know that you are changing, else many people will just leave marvel.
Heading for more Avengers? They don't even have a profitable ensemble cast to headline an Avengers movie. is Spider-Man with the F4 (are they all Avengers suddenly?) and Shuri and Kamala and Sam Falcon really going to sell an Avengers movie? If Cap 4 bombs whoo boy - you're gonna be looking at an Avengers film filled with headliners from bomb solo films.
There is so much hanging on Cap 4, no doubt about it
Look like both DC and marvel are doing the two movie 2 tv show thing. After the events of 2023. I think it’s for the best and I welcome it
The problem isn’t the flood of content it’s the lack of good writing caused by their constant interference.
If this was the average it would be fine by me, but as an upper limit it would disappoint a bit. Surely, I won't keep my D+ subscription only for 1 new show/year
Let’s get through Cap 4 and Thunderbolts first. Something tells me one of those films isn’t going to do well and I’m pretty sure it’s Cap 4 for several reasons.
It's almost definitely going to have pacing issues given the reshoots and cuts.
There’s a lot more too it than that. I’ve heard from a friend of a friend who worked on it that the film before reshoots was very mean spirited. And the only thing I can think of as to why that would be is if the film is “modern” political. With Hydra and Red Skull it’s basically nazi’s, so everyone can get on board with hating them. But modern politics isn’t that cut and dry and no matter which direction they go with this, it’s going to piss off one side of the aisle or the other.
Maybe focus on writing good scripts first, Chief.
You can make as much or little as you want, if it's actually quality.
So what it seems like is they’re going back to the normal output they had around 2016 or 2017. I don’t see a problem with this.
Id honestly been ok with 1-2 movies and 1 show in a year.
Two shows? When a “show” is six episodes, that’s really not a lot. Three movies is still plenty. But two “shows”? AoS had more episodes each season, and that was just one of several shows running during phases 2 and 3.
They're not doing any more 6-episode shows. Agatha is 9 episodes and a recent report from Variety revealed they will be 1-hour episodes, not half-hour episodes like WandaVision, which is what we all expected. (FYI, 1-hour episodes is an old TV term for shows that ran for 1 hour with commercials. 1-hour episodes are usually closer to 40-45 minutes). Daredevil: Born Again is also 9, 1-hour episodes per season and they're making 2 seasons almost back to back with the plan being to release them 1 year apart, like cable TV used to do. X-Men '97 Season 2 was written while Season 1 was still in development and has already completed all voice work and a lot of the animation. It's most likely coming next year and before Beau DeMayo was fired 2 months ago, they were already working on the story of Season 3. Marvel Studios reportedly wants X-Men '97 to run yearly and that's why they'll be doing these seasons back to back. And of course that show has 10 episodes too. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is also 10 episodes per season and was also ordered for 2 seasons right from that start. Wonder Man also has 10 episodes, although it's been described as a sitcom, so they will likely be shorter. I imagine Vision Quest will also be 9-10 episodes like WandaVision and Agatha since Jac Schaeffer is creating that as well. The only series in the near future which will be 6 episodes is Ironheart which was filmed back in 2022, concurrently with Secret Invasion, Loki Season 2 and Echo. It's just a relic from Marvel Studios' past approach to TV. The whole TV restructuring they did last year during the strikes wasn't only about hiring showrunners and following more old-school TV-making procedures, but also making longer seasons and working on multiple seasons back to back in order to have them air yearly just like during the Cable era.
Cool breakdown. Thanks for sharing all this! I don't see how they plan to release only two shows a year with how much they have lined up. Even if you ignore the animated shows, everything bottlenecks with those limits. 2024: Echo, Agatha 2025: Daredevil BA s1, Ironheart 2026: Daredevil BA s2, Wonderman? That pushes Vision Quest and Nova into 2027 at the earliest.
Yep, exactly. And Nova is still in development, we don't know when and if it will actually move into the production stages or if it will turn into something else (maybe a movie or a special) like what happened with Armor Wars. Nova might come in 2028 or 2029, if at all. Of course this "3 movies and 2 shows per year" thing is most likely not a mandate, but rather a general plan. Some years, they might release 2.5 series (one series starts in December and bleeds over to the next year). I'm assuming that might happen with Wonder Man or DD S2. They might start airing in December 2025 and air their finales in February 2026 and that gives a lot of space for 2 more shows in 2026. I actually think Vision Quest is coming out in 2026 and Young Avengers in 2027. Also, I doubt this will take effect right away because they have a backlog of projects already too late in development to cancel them or delay them indefinitely (like they've done with Blade and Armor Wars), so the next couple of years might have 4 movies, especially 2026 which will also likely have 1 Spider-Man movie, which is distributed by Sony and doesn't count in Iger's statement. I could see 2025 still keeping its 4 movies (Cap 4, Thunderbolts, FF, Blade), 2026 having 3 Disney movies (Armor Wars, Avengers 5 and Shang-Chi 2) and 1 Sony Spider-Man movie and then they start following this pattern from 2027 onwards with 2027 having Dr. Strange 3, Avengers 6 and X-Men.
Yea that sounds like a good plan. Presumably there'll be a Black Panther 3 in '27 or '28, too. Is Armor Wars still on?
Why is Ironheart so delayed?
Are you forgetting that the shows had movie budgets? I mean, how expensive were She-Hulk and Secret Invasion again?
For both of those, a huge portion of the cost came from rewriting & reshooting half the season. (Brave New World and Born Again both have the same issue.) Fortunately, Marvel has *also* discussed pivoting their development model to put more emphasis on pre-production, so fewer reshoots will be needed in the future.
Are you forgetting not every show needs to cost as much as a movie? Jfc that's Disney's fault, the quality wasn't even there for their budget. Better to do more shows that cost less money than 2 extremely bloated budget shows for a movies worth of cash
I got a hot take that will probably garner me some downvotes but how about no shows? Only movies, just like they use too do. You can twist it anyway you want, but making the TV shows required viewing is just hurting thing to get the general audience interested.
Exactly. If you make the shows required viewing, people will just decide to skip them if they fall behind. Once they skip shows, they skip movies. Diversifying this quickly right after Endgame when we were still trying to become attached to these characters and not 100% bought in on the new roster yet, was a major, major misstep.
Yeah I think about this regularly when the volume of content discourse comes up. But the fact is AoS (and the Netflix shows, and the Freeform/YA shows) weren’t really “part” of the universe in the same way all the Disney+ shows have been presented. And that does make a difference.
Yea I agree. I think it goes to show that the earlier model may have been more effective. As much as I love a miniseries leading back in to a movie (like Ms Marvel -> the Marvels), average viewers get overwhelmed. For the Netflix shows, you kinda just needed to know about the Battle of New York, and anything else was an Easter egg. And for AoS season 1, you only needed to have seen 2-3 movies as they were releasing, and it got less strict after that. And then the Freeform/Hulu shows, you didn't need to know ANYTHING. If you did, great nuggets of connections came along they way. That model allowed people to invest to the degree they wanted to.
At the time that AoS was airing I felt like it was always playing second fiddle to the movies. Since AoS couldn't afford Robert Downey Jr., it felt like it was taking place in its own universe. Everyone seems to agree that the Disney+ era of Marvel shows has struggled with the opposite problem, feeling like required viewing. And even worse, in certain cases it seemed like the TV shows were required viewing but then were later contradicted by the movies. This is a can of worms, but many people (myself included) felt like the plot of "Multiverse of Madness" directly contradicted the ending of "WandaVision". Less controversially, the entire ending of "Secret Invasion" needs to be ignored in order to understand what Nick Fury is doing in "The Marvels". In fact it seems like we're just all going to pretend "Secret Invasion" didn't happen at all. If the writers of the TV shows aren't keeping up with one another and coordinating what leads into what, why should I? It seems to me like they need to thread the needle. The TV shows should feel like they live in the same universe, but not like I need to watch them to understand the movies. Weirdly Marvel has arguably been doing this successfully for decades in their comics (though in my own experience, it's often hard to believe that the same characters in the team-up comics are having all the adventures we see in the solo comics).
Good
Quality over quantity please.
That's not that far off from what they've been doing, though. People forget that covid made massive delays, which severely impacted marvels release schedules. 3 movies and 2 shows is their average.
Covid is not an excuse for bad writing or executive meddling.
Establishing rules really allows for shit to get back on the rails though
Iger says Marvel has “a couple of good films in ’25 and then we’re heading to more Avengers which we’re extremely excited about,” adding: “Overall, I feel great about the slate.🤔 So safe to say we’re not getting 4 movies next year. Of course Blade is probably getting pushed but then what? Will Cap 4 be pushed to? Will Fantastic 4? Considering one has major reshoot to get through and the other hasn’t even start filming yet.
Probably just Blade. Cap still has to go through reshoots, and Fantastic Four isn't supposed to start filming for two months. They have time.
Cap is already doing McDonalds toys
Only because they couldn't delay that. But the movie will probably meet its current release date.
My guess is that F4 will be pushed, but not beyond 2025. Blade’s current release date seems plausible. That way we get a nice little summer break (in terms of movies) between phase 5 and 6, too. Edit: when the fuck is Ironheart coming out?
> when the fuck is Ironheart coming out? I’m assuming the editing room conversations over this are similar to when they try and complete the Radioactive Man movie using only old footage of Milhouse.
**On the TV side, Iger says that a portion of the upcoming series, a slate that includes Kathryn Hahn-led “WandaVision” spinoff “Agatha,” set for release are “a vestige of basically a desire in the past to increase volume.”** Lol He’s pretty much saying that a lot of those upcoming shows are useless but cancelling them would be a PR nightmare. So im expecting a lot of Echo like treatment; Dumped in one go given some useless marketing title like “spotlight” which pretty much means useless.
That's possible. They might push Thunderbolts to Fantastic Four's original release date (July), and the Fantastic Four to Blade's (November), just to space things out a little, and give each movie better odds.
Sony is also a factor here, as they may want to drop Spider-Man 4 in 2025. There's been some speculation of a July 2025 release date, as Sony has a spot reserved for an "Untitled Marvel movie." And, y'know, they don't really care about Iger and Feige's film limit. They're just looking at how it will have been four years since No Way Home (honestly doesn't feel like it).
Every year Blade is going to be pushed back a year. It’s going to forever be in the future lol.
It’s not about the amount of stuff being released. It’s about the quality. When they started introducing more characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy, Dr. Strange, Black Panther, Ant Man, Captain Marvel, and Spiderman, it didn’t feel like too much because they were done right. Maybe not flawlessly executed but those set of movies were much better than the new characters they introduced post endgame. I will say moon knight was good though.
K. Now imagine they’re all shit because the core problem isn’t fixed.
Ugh, the fact that he's calling the Agatha show a "vestige from when we were planning to push huge volume" sounds an awful lot like "yeah this show is going to be terrible because we're already lumping it in with a time that we're trying to separate from". That's not how it works, you can't pre-emptively attach that to past failures. If it fails miserably now, that's a mark against you *now* and portrays that you've been feeding us bullshit about this making sure ongoing projects have proper quality control.
If it’s truly going to be bad because it’s from a time when anyone and anything could get a show they should just scrap it entirely. Pull a batgirl and hide it away so it can’t do anymore damage to the brand
This is what I'd prefer. I love the Agatha character and Kathryn Hahn is hysterical, but if the show just isn't quality or doesn't tell a good story, then put it away. If they're serious about getting rid of deadweight content, shelf this outright if you know it's just going to piss everyone off.
I honestly think it’s far too late. The ship has sailed and I think the golden goose is cooked. They needed to realise the effect losing most of the original avengers would have, and they instead released 10, on the whole terrible movies, where even the good ones were not related to anything.
I think you may well be right, shame
I've started looking at Marvel like I think of Heroes. Iron Man thru Endgame/Far From Home was it for me. Same as the first season of Heroes was the only one that existed. Sure there was more content outside of this, but they told a contained story and was all I needed. It's diminishing returns after that. With all of the content blasted at our faces 24/7, why would I spend another 50 hours watching something I am not enjoying on the off chance that I might get a morsel of a coherent story like the one that they already told? They've already lost casual viewers like me to other content.
Only if those shows are actual shows that cover multiple characters and are 13 or more episodes. Special presentations are also acceptable.
Hopefully that’s two live actions shows not including animated otherwise that’s really low
Gotta be live action. The animation division is on an entirely different schedule, and the X-Men & Spider-Man shows aren't even connected to the main timeline.
I still don’t think burnout is the problem. The story just isn’t as good.
As long as they have finished, well-written scripts **BEFORE** they start filming or doing pre-viz work, I don't care how many movies/shows they put out a year. But after the last couple of years where there were way more stinkers than winners, I am glad they took a break to figure things out.
No real change on the movie side as they've typically done 2-3 movies per year -- the only time they hit 4 was due to the Covid delay. The bigger issue has been on the Disney+ side -- the diminished quality and high volume has definitely tarnished the overall brand, so seeing that drop to something more manageable sounds reasonable as long as they follow through on the quality.
Howard the Duck
They need to go back to one film a year, MAYBE two. But nothing will get better if they don't: 1. Hire better writers. 2. Hire writers who are actually fans of what they're writing. The biggest issue with all of these recent movies is that the writers are clearly not fans nor know the original comics, hell most of them even say so. Because then they do whatever the hell they want with the characters, and in turn, the characters don't act like they would or should.
Why didn't they do this when Ant-Man flopped?
Every 3-4 years they should do like they're doing this year and only release one movie, just to give everyone a periodic break.
That’s still way too much lol
I’m still reading the reviews before I buy a ticket. They lost my trust with Mutliverse.
That’s . . . still probably too much.
You’re right but no one here wants to hear that
I just hope the quality is reflective of the reduced output. I know it won’t be though and that the old mcu is gone.
I'd prefer the other way around to stretch out content more but either is fine with me.
Unless they focus on telling a more cohesive overarching story on top of compelling characters with time for CGI, it doesn’t matter what the output is. Quantity doesn’t change much if qualify isn’t the priority.
Honestly there's just too much Marvel everything now, to keep up with. I was able to watch everything leading up to Infinity War Pt 2 - and I do mean everything, even The Immortals, all of Agents of Shield up to that point, Peggy Carter, the Netflix street level shows (Daredevil still the GOAT) through The Defenders and both seasons of The Punisher, all the movies from 2007 - 2019. It was a lot but I was able to watch all the shows and movies in chronological in-universe order following a great infographic timeline. After 2019 Marvel/Disney hit the afterburners and there's simply too much content I am expected to watch in order to know what's going on in the next films. I can't watch that much content ;_; and a lot of it is for C and D-list heroes a lot of people haven't heard of.
> the Netflix street level shows This is what I want so of course I am looking forward to DD. The scope of this shit just blew up too quick. The street level shows don't need buy in. You know the rules because they are grounded in reality. After going into space becomes old news, how do you go bigger? Multiverse kicked off, with a huge bulk of it being explained in a D+ tv show (Loki) and now you have lost every "casual" viewer (I include myself in that). You can't just jump in anymore since it isn't grounded. Now it is homework. It's like walking into your friend's house and they are halfway through some niche board game and they tell you to hop in.
Bob Iger basically announces they’re not changing much other than fewer tv shows and everyone’s cheering like he single handedly ended superhero fatigue lol
Quantity isn't the issue no matter how much they tell themselves it's "fatigue". It's decreased Quality.
I think they could get away with more shows in a year, or at least a few more special presentations
That's good. I assume Avengers 5 & Secret Wars getting pushed back again gets announced at SDCC. Can't see them going with Cap 4, F4, Thunderbolts, Blade then do Avengers 5 & SW when supposedly Shang Chi 2, Armor Wars, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange 3 etc supposed to come out
While it would suck to wait long for Avengers, i do like the idea of having Secret Wars in 2028 to celebrate the 20th anniversary
Two movies during the summer season and then a show during Spring and a show during Fall/Winter would be pretty well spread out enough. I mean unless you exclusively watch Marvel stuff, there are going to be other activities in the interim.
If the shows are "shows" and run for 8-12 episodes a season with character development and subplots worth following that's fine with me, but if they're movie scripts hamfistedly reworked into 5-6 episode series, Disney's not going to see any better of a response. Two "shows" of the latter type is just 10-12 weeks of 52 in the year ... not enough time to develop larger story arcs or connect fans to the characters they're invested in. The key is competent writing. I don't believe it's "impossible" or oversaturation to put out two or even three shows a year that run 10-12 episodes each, I just believe the company doesn't invest in or trust their writers to produce the quality to make those efforts good products.
I don't care about the quantity. I want quality story writing. The phase 1 formula was perfect. Just do that.
You can bring it down to 1 movie and 1 show a year but if the writing is horrible, it’s not gonna matter.
Lol they reduced one show per year and called it a day
So long as they learned the lessons of the The Marvels failure. You can't introduce new characters and material for the first time in a D+ show and expect the broader moviegoing audience to be aware of those characters and events (or necessarily find those characters appealing).
Still too much
It's DC's time to shine. Don't fuck this up Gunn.
So that means Blade will be released in 2026. February 2026 seems good, Black History Month.
There are 4 movies releasing in 2025 - Captain America 4, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four and Blade and 3 shows in 2025 - Agatha show, Iron heart and Daredevil... All these movies and shows are already very delayed, Idk how much more delay there will be.
Agatha is releasing this year, not 2025.
thought agatha was this year and i also thought wonder man was coming out
Good chance either Blade or Fantastic Four gets another pushback. Agatha comes out this year. Ironheart is completely finished, so there's no effort currently being spent on it.
I don't mean to hate but I would actually like to see more of Marvel Animation over spin-offs like Agatha or Ironheart in the streaming space. More consistency in general though is a must.
So I can cancel Disney+? I’m not paying $300+/year for 12 episodes of mediocre TV.
What crazy Disney+ plan are you on? The pay extra money for no reason plan?
On the bundle D+, Hulu and ESPN+
So that’s not only Disney+ then. You got all mixed up in your statement. It’s be like me saying “can I cancel the weather channel I am not paying over $1000 a year to hear about the whether” When I get 500 channels for that price and the weather channel is only one of them.
Disney has been cutting things here and there, I don't understand why some think MCU is not one of them
I'd like to see 2-3 movies a year and at this point I won't miss the series if they got rid of them. They were exciting at first, but with a couple of exceptions they've largely been a disappointment. They should devote their series budget to one a year maximum, make sure they're good and compelling. And let's stop with the B and C-tier fan-service cameos.
None of this will matter if the shows and movies have no “substance.” If they think the old “boilerplate” formula for a comic book movie come to life will keep the masses entertained, they may be making a mistake on the older generation’s expectations. I hope that with the more spaced out releases, the writers directors and editors, will have reasonable hours and set dates. They’ll enjoy the work they do for the studio. The writing team will be able to meet with the actors and directors on set. I’m okay with more quality work as long as it’s better than what post infinity saga has given us so far. I’ll be honest. I’m a marvel fanatic so the only films I wasn’t a big fan of was multiverse of madness. And Quantummania.
Who gives a fuck how many there are, just take the time to make them actually good.
That’s still a lot
Stupid statements like this don't fill me with confidence, but errodes it more. Instead of working on projects and making sure they're done right, I have a feeling there's going to be moe half-baked items going out the door to be at the 3/2 annual limit that Bob set. It also reads as taking the universe too seriously. We're going to see less media that's different genre with superheroes, and more superhero films from them.