The last few months have seen Marvel TV really struggling with some public humiliations, made worse by the massive expansions by Marvel Studios into their small-screen territory. The embarrassing inability to find homes for live-action New Warriors and Ghost Rider shows, even on Disney-owned networks, have made Marvel TV look more like the unwanted stepchild than ever before. Whatever tenuous working relationship between the two Marvel branches is long over, and it looks like there is a decisive winner.
Variety reports that Jeph Loeb’s Marvel TV may be moving on from live-action series and focusing its attentions solely on animation. That would leave Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios to continue doing what they’ve been doing lately, which is producing big budget shows within the MCU that dwarf the likes of Runaways, Cloak & Dagger, and Agents of SHIELD. With Marvel Studios spending a reported $150M-$200M on its Disney+ series such as Falcon & the Winter Soldier, Loki, and WandaVision, there’s just no way Loeb could hope to compete.
The question is, what happens to those shows currently on Hulu and Freeform? We already know Agents of SHIELD is wrapping up soon, and one of the heaviest blows Marvel TV took was the loss of its popular Netflix characters. Does this mean all of the live-action series Marvel produces will fall under Feige’s guidance? Or do they get canceled and forgotten like what happened with Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, etc.? I’d love to see all of those network shows moved to Disney+, but that’s imagining an endless amount of room for Disney content on the streaming service and that’s simply not the case.
