Amidst extending his contract as Disney CEO for a few more years up to 2026, Bob Iger owns up to comments about the Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 4 and Phase 5 failures.
Bob Iger signed on to extend his tenure as Disney CEO for three more years, and on Thursday, July 13, he sat down in an exclusive interview with CNBC on the current state that Disney is in now. With oversaturated properties as have become Star Wars and Marvel, Iger sees the numbers and acknowledges that the ship is sinking and he’s confident in turning things around and sets goals to pull back on costs and projects.
When Bob Iger stepped down in 2020 as CEO and was replaced by Bob Chapek, things went off the rails rather quickly.
What was once a seemingly flawless formula of distribution for Marvel Studios soon became a matter of quantity over quality. The change of CEO was not taken well with many demanding Bob Iger to come back and steer this sinking ship of a mess.
Needless to say, Chapek’s run as CEO was short-lived after being fired from the mouse due to poor performance and overall earnings for the company which led Iger to take back the reigns in 2022 coming out of his short retirement.
Is Disney Plus content diluting interest in Marvel?
The numbers at the box office for recent Marvel Studios films did not fare well with Iger, compared to older entries when Marvel Studios was in its prime and glory. Now that Disney has taken on the streaming route for more entertainment, they are pushing out more shows than most fans could keep up with let alone care for. This is something Bob Iger feels is diluting interest among fans.
"“Marvel is a great example of that. It had not been in the television business at any significant level, and not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of TV series,” said Iger. “Frankly, it diluted focus and attention.”"
This causes somewhat of a pressure on fans to have to consume every series and special presentation on the streaming service in order to fully enjoy and understand the full MCU experience when another Marvel movie hits theaters. With so much content coming out of the woodwork, superhero fatigue is to be expected and who could blame the consumer?
Bob realizes and acknowledges the hard truth of the state of Marvel on the overproduction of films and television shows and knows that they have to pull back on certain projects and budget costs as well in order for the company to thrive and grow and maintain its essence.
With Phase 5 currently in play with Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, Secret Invasion, The Marvels, and Loki all coming out this year we have a lot of Marvel content to consume before we see Marvel Studios make some decisions in the near future of what’s necessary content and some release date changes are to be expected.
What remains to be seen is whether Bob Iger and company will delay any Marvel Studios projects to slow the turnout of new titles.