Do you have Marvel and Star Wars fatigue? Or are you constantly begging for Disney to release new content about your favorite characters? The Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger offered some interesting insight into what fans can expect from these mega franchises moving forwards.
During a Morgan Stanley conference, Iger discussed how Disney’s outlook and approach to film and TV creation would shift in the near future. In particular, he referenced plans to evaluate and potentially scale back the content created by the company to reduce costs.
“I’m really pleased that the support that I’m getting from the content creators of the company is significant and real, and it comes in the form of reducing the expense per content, whether it’s a TV series or a film, where costs have just skyrocketed in a huge way and not a supportable way in my opinion. They all agree to that,” Iger said. He also added the path forward would be about “understanding how much volume we need, reducing how much we make. So it’s how much we spend on what we make and how much we make.”
Iger specifically commented on shifting the approaches for some of Disney’s major acquired franchises, Marvel and Star Wars.
Iger on Marvel
When discussing potential future projects in the MCU, Iger said the company plans to focus on highlighting newer characters, and doing fewer third or fourth features in a series.
“What we have to look at at Marvel is not necessarily the volume of Marvel storytelling, but how many times we go back to the well on certain characters,” Iger said. “Sequels typically work well for us, but do you need a third or a fourth, for instance? Or is it time to turn to other characters? There’s nothing in any way inherently off in terms of the Marvel brand. I think we just have to look at what characters and stories we are mining.”
Iger added that fans could see this plan developing already, with the studio’s plans to assemble a new team of Avengers for a film arc.
“If you look at the trajectory of Marvel over the next five years, you’ll see a lot of newness.”
Iger on Star Wars
Disney appears even more cautious when making plans for future Star Wars films.
“Star Wars, we made three what we called saga films, which is obviously the successors to George Lucas’ first six. They did very well at the box office — tremendously well as a matter of fact. We’ve made two so-called stand-alones in Rogue One and Solo. Rogue One did quite well, Solo was a little disappointing to us. It gave us pause just to think maybe the cadence was a little too aggressive. And so we decided to pull back a bit. We still are developing Star Wars films. We’re going to make sure that when we make one, that it’s the right one, so we are being very careful there.”
Iger’s statement comes fresh off the news that Patty Jenkins’ Rouge Squadron feature and an untitled Kevin Feige Star Wars feature had been canceled.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
