Since the Infinity Saga ended, there's been an undeniable decline in the quality of Marvel Studios' output. While the MCU remains a long way off the dire straits the DCEU has found itself in, the franchise is no longer critic-proof and has even delivered some commercial disappointments.
Many fans have blamed a sudden increase in releases, with a seemingly endless stream of Disney+ TV shows creating a quantity-over-quality approach to storytelling.
Yesterday evening, the news broke that Disney CEO Bob Iger has extended his contract and will remain in that role until 2026. It's news which has been welcomed by Wall Street at a time the company is facing declining theme park attendance and some noteworthy box office flops.
Despite being billed as a vital chapter in the Multiverse Saga, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, for example, failed to even reach $500 million worldwide and found itself skewered by critics. Now, Iger has chimed in on that and where he believes Marvel Studios has gone wrong.
"There have been some disappointments we would have liked some of our more recent releases to perform better," the executive acknowledged. "It’s reflective not as a problem from a personnel perspective, but I think in our 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."
As great as it's been to get so much MCU content, it's true that the sheer number of stories being told has made the movies feel less special and perhaps led to a decrease in excitement (and ticket sales).
Reading between the lines, it seems likely the plan now is for Marvel Studios to drastically reduce its Disney+ offerings. While we're likely to still get maybe a couple of TV shows every year, many of the, quite frankly, unnecessary projects once rumoured to be on the way are probably being scrapped.
That no doubt includes everything from a Black Panther spin-off to a Wong TV series; after all, as fun as they'd have been, did we really need them?