The MCU hasn’t been doing so hot recently, even if it is still making lots of money, so Marvel is planning on reducing its output going forward.
It’s fair to say that 2023 was a fine year for Marvel – definitely not a good one, maybe even bad actually. Ant-Man 3 certainly underperformed, for one, and The Marvels is the lowest-grossing MCU movie since its inception. Not a great look for a franchise whose previous output makes up four of the top 10 highest-grossing films of all time, with Avengers: Endgame even holding the number one spot for a while. Now, though, it seems like both Disney and Marvel want to course correct the waning franchise, as in the former’s recent quarterly earnings call, CEO Bob Iger spoke of the companies’ plans for the MCU (via Variety).
According to Iger, Marvel will be reducing its film output to around two to three movies a year, and TV series to only a couple per year, in a move that’s part of Disney’s overall strategy to reduce what it makes to focus on quality, an angle that’s “particularly true with Marvel”. Iger explained that “We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, or a maximum of three. And we’re working hard on what that path is.”
He went on to note that Marvel has “a couple of good films in ’25 and then we’re heading to more ‘Avengers,’ which we’re extremely excited about. Overall, I feel great about the slate. It’s something that I’ve committed to spending more and more time on. The team is one that I have tremendous confidence in and the IP that we’re mining, including all the sequels that we’re doing, is second to none.”
Weirdly, next year will supposedly see the release of four Marvel films (Captain America: Brave New World, Blade, Thunderbolts, and Fantastic Four), so I can only presume this is the plan for 2026 onwards, unless some dates are getting shifted around. I can definitely see Blade getting moved into the next year, given its difficulties so far.
As part of the same earnings call, Iger also shared that we should probably expect more sequels than original ideas on the animated front, as Disney plans to lean on them for a while.
