It’s no mystery that Marvel projects have been a mixed bag since Avengers: Endgame, and Thunderbolts* was a huge win that Marvel really needed after all these years.
What’s interesting is that the movie is supposed to mark a change in strategy for Disney. In a recent investor’s call (via Variety) Disney CEO Bob Iger explained:
“We all know that in our zeal to flood our streaming platform with more content, that we turned to all of our creative engines, including Marvel, and had them produce a lot more… We’ve also learned over over time that quantity does not necessarily beget quality. And frankly, we’ve all admitted to ourselves that we lost a little focus by making too much. By consolidating a bit and having Marvel focus much more on their films, we believe that will result in better quality. I think the first and best example is ‘Thunderbolts*.’ I feel very good about that.”
We don’t know exactly how much the change is going to be yet, but we can already see that there are definitely less projects getting announced compared to a few years ago. Admittedly, there are still some MCU projects that fans would have loved a follow-up to like Shang-Chi and Moon Knight; but it does seem like the current focus is to get to Secret Wars and establish a new status quo by the time the dust settles on that movie.
Personally, I was open for more experimental projects that didn’t require every fan to watch them, but it was only now that Marvel had found a different, more traditional approach to the television division. We don’t know what that means for the future, but I do hope that some characters get revisted; I’m willing to compromise on a She-Hulk streaming movie if that’s what needs to happen.
For now, watch out for Thunderbolts* which is now out in theaters.
