A few weeks ago, Nia DaCosta’s ‘The Marvels’ moved to international theaters and has thus far achieved disappointing box office results by MCU standards. Marvel and Disney’s sci-fi adventure has only surpassed the $200 million mark worldwide so far, marking the worst box office performance in the history of the MCU and marking the record-breaking numbers the superhero company has ever recorded that it recedes into the distance.
Disney now wants to respond to these changes and fundamentally rethink the creative approach at Marvel. Disney CEO Bob Iger said this during the annual Deal Book Summit (through ) that amount has eclipsed everything else in the MCU in the past: “Quality must yield quality again and that doesn’t just happen. And in our case, quantity diluted quality – and Marvel was particularly affected by this.”
Disney boss Bob Iger sees creative change at Marvel as a top priority
The MCU sequels in particular were not particularly well received by audiences and critics Bob Iger emphasized that there always had to be an artistic reason to make sequels, of which there were simply “too many” in the MCU: “The story is common [einer Fortsetzung] not as strong as the original story, which could be a problem. There must be reasons, reasons beyond the financial, to make these films.”
The Disney CEO now wants to turn things around and vowed that the problems at Marvel are currently at the top of his priority list: “I would say my top priority right now is to get the studio on the right track creatively.” Going forward, Iger only wants to give his blessing to sequels that are “worth telling.”
There are many sequels on the way
Looking at Disney’s list of upcoming films, there are still tons of sequels to be found here – including many sequels “to the studio’s most important films,” as Iger himself explained. In addition to Disney animated sequels such as ‘Frozen 3’ and ‘Frozen 4’, the projects also include MCU adventures such as ‘Deadpool 3’, ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ or ‘Avengers 5: The Kang Dynasty’ and ‘Avengers 6: Secret Wars” counts.
So far, Iger’s efforts don’t seem to have had any impact on the sheer quantity, although many of these films have been in development for a long time and we can see the quality firsthand in theaters in the coming years. In any case, new approaches to the Marvel adventures are already being considered: