Disney has announced a much-needed overhaul of its future Marvel content slates. In an announcement on Tuesday morning, Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed the change in how the media corporation will produce its Marvel content in its fiscal second-quarter earnings call. According to Iger, Disney will begin producing only two new Marvel TV series and three movies per year.
“We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four, and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two or at the maximum three,” Iger added, “And we’re working hard on what that path is, we’ve got a couple of good films in ’25 and then we’re heading to more Avengers, which we’re extremely excited about.”
For Iger, this change is a part of Disney’s “overall strategy to reduce output and focus on quality.” This is hardly the first time Iger has commented on reducing the output of Marvel content. Since the release of Avengers Endgame, the overwhelming amount of Marvel content released in theaters and streaming has hurt its revenue earnings rather than helped them. Iger noted as such at the the Sun Valley Conference in July 2023.
“There have been some disappointments. We would have liked some of our more recent releases to perform better,” said Iger. “It’s reflective not as a problem from a personnel perspective, but I think in our zeal to 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.”
In addition to reducing Marvel content, Iger also noted that there will be a balancing act while focusing on producing original content and sequels. Currently, Disney is leaning heavily towards producing sequels, especially in animation.
“Overall, I feel great about the slate,” he continued. “It’s something that I’ve committed to spending more and more time on, the team is one that I have tremendous confidence in, and the IP that we’re mining, including all the sequels that we’re doing, is second to none.”
