The return of Bob Iger as The Walt Disney Company CEO is leading to some major changes at the company, many of which were recently detailed in a report from Deadline.
There's been a lot of speculation about what this might mean for Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm, especially as the output from both studios was arguably better under Iger's watch than it has been with the ousted, profits-driven Bob Chapek. Many have blamed him for Marvel Studios' apparent shift from quality to quantity in Phase 4, so could changes now be on the horizon?
According to The Cosmic Circus, yes.
Over the course of The Infinity Saga, Marvel Studios released twenty-three movies, all of which were positively received and hits at the box office. Phase 4, meanwhile, has seen us get a total of nineteen movies, TV shows, and Special Presentations, with many of those hit-and-miss titles disappointing fans (Thor: Love and Thunder) and underwhelming critics (Eternals).
Now and then, you really can have too much of a good thing, and this oversaturation has lessened interest in The Multiverse Saga due to it becoming a huge commitment to keep up to speed with everything happening. Kevin Feige, and the studio as a whole, being stretched thin has also led to issues with everything from a lack of connectivity to poor visual effects,
So, it's not surprising that the site says Marvel Studios is now "re-evaluating its release lineup for Phases 5 & 6," and are aware Phase 4 took a dip in quality. With concerns those next two Phases could be just as messy, Disney is looking at future releases, with a renewed interest in ensuring they get back to a quality-over-quantity approach to storytelling.
Some sort of creative oversight over future MCU releases has been considered, and it sounds like we could see a shift to more Special Presentations instead of TV shows. That would be a cheaper, quicker, and far less demanding way to introduce new heroes and set the stage for bigger stories, avoiding the need to stretch those stories out across six hours.
Projects currently in pre-production may now be at risk, with sources adding that we should "expect shifts in release schedules for some projects, changes in media formats for others, and in the most extreme (and unlikely) of cases, a postponement or outright cancellation of a project that would not be suited towards the overall story of the Multiverse Saga."
In other words, that massive slate of movies and TV shows announced by Kevin Feige at Comic-Con and D23 may be in flux and not worth getting too excited about for the time being.
We'll keep you updated on this one as it develops.