Marvel Studios took a unique approach to marketing Thunderbolts*, hyping up the cast and crew's A24 credentials. Then, a week after it was released, the studio doubled down on rebranding it as *The New Avengers after that huge reveal in the movie's closing moments.
Despite hugely positive reviews (it has 88% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and 93% from moviegoers), Thunderbolts* has only made $382 million at the worldwide box office and failed to crack $400 million.
During a recent roundtable event, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige shared his take on why the movie underperformed and placed the blame on the MCU's increased streaming output.
"It’s that expansion that I think led people to say, 'Do I have to see all of these? It used to be fun, but now do I have to know everything about all of these?'" he explained. "And I think The Marvels hit it hardest where people are like, 'OK, I recognize her from a billion-dollar movie. But who are those other two? I guess they were in some TV show. I’ll skip it.'"
"'Thunderbolts*' I thought was a very, very good movie. But nobody knew that title and many of those characters were from a [TV] show.
"Some of them were still feeling the residual effects of that notion of, 'I guess I had to have seen these other shows to understand who this is,'" Feige continued. "I think if you actually saw the movie, that wouldn’t be the case, and we make the movie so that’s not the case. But I think we still have to make sure the audience understands that."
An issue that's plagued Marvel Studios since Avengers: Endgame's release in 2019 has been a quantity over quality approach to storytelling, forced on them by former Disney CEO Bob Chapek and the launch of Disney+.
To put that into context for you, between 2008's Iron Man and Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios produced around 50 hours of content. Since the Multiverse Saga, that's more like 127 hours (in six years, compared to eleven).
"That’s too much," Feige acknowledged, adding that "the expansion is certainly what devalued" the MCU's output. "It was a big company push, and it doesn’t take too much to push us to go, 'People have been asking for Ms. Marvel for years, and now we can do it? Do it! Oscar Isaac wants to be Moon Knight? Do it!'"
"So there was a mandate that we were put in the middle of, but we also thought it’d be fun to bring these to life. For the first time ever, quantity trumped quality. We spent 12 years working on the Infinity Saga saying that’s never going to happen to us."
"We always had more characters than we could possibly make because we weren’t going to make a movie a month," he noted. "Suddenly, there’s a mandate to make more. And we go, 'Well, we do have more,'
Part of the plan moving forward is to start "grinding down" on budgets, with the plan being for movies to cost a third less than those produced in 2022 and 2023. Pushed on where things stand with the MCU moving forward, Feige said, "It’s traditionally a five-year plan. I think it goes to 2032 right now."
As for his future at Marvel Studios, while Feige only has "two years, a little less" on his current contract, it doesn't sound like he intends to leave.
"Do I want to be making big movies for big audiences in 10 or 15 years from now? Yes, absolutely. That’s all I want to do," Feige said. "Marvel’s a great way to do that for me right now. But I hope to make big movies for lots of people forever more."
You can overanalyse that statement (perhaps he intends to make big movies elsewhere?). However, Feige seemingly remains committed to the MCU as we head into the next Saga of storytelling and is shifting focus to the X-Men for the MCU's post-Avengers: Secret Wars reboot.