Straight up, Marvel is in a bit of a drought. While this year it obviously began with the lackluster numbers for Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania, it’s actually been going on for longer. When did it all start? Well, you could argue that it began once folks at home were able to watch Marvel shows every week on Disney+. And you know who agrees? Disney CEO Bob Iger, who also recognizes that all of Disney is in a skid right now.
Speaking with CNBC (via Variety), Iger said the plan for Disney is “spending less” and “making less” when it comes to Marvel and other major tentpoles. The overall goal is cost-cutting to save more than $5.5B, and yes that means there will be more employee layoffs.
“There have been some disappointments,” said Iger. “We would have liked some of our more recent releases to perform better. It’s reflective not as a problem from a personnel perspective, but I think in our zeal to basically grow our content significantly to serve mostly our streaming offerings, we ended up taxing our people way beyond — in terms of their time and their focus — way beyond where they had been.”
“Marvel’s a great example of that,” Iger continued. “They had not been in the TV business at any significant level. Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series, and frankly, it diluted focus and attention. That is, I think, more of the cause than anything.”
In short, expect to see less Marvel Studios content, and probably less Star Wars, too. It wouldn’t be shocking to see Lucasfilm rearrange the scheduling for the three big screen projects they recently announced.
