Disney CEO Seems To Admit Marvel And Star Wars Are In Trouble, Is Slashing Budgets
Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed the company is going to be "better at curating" Star Wars and Marvel projects, which means they could be released far slower.
If you’ve been suffering from superhero fatigue, you may be in luck. Disney CEO Bob Iger has recently retaken the reigns of the massive company and has threatened to slash the budgets of franchises such as Marvel and Star Wars. According to a write-up in The Hollywood Reporter, Bob Iger is looking to get “better at curating” franchise content such as the recent MCU installments, and Star Wars Disney+ series‘ which he marks as “extraordinarily expensive.”
While it’s true that Disney spends an exorbitant amount of money on both marketing and production costs for flagship franchises such as Marvel and Star Wars, one would think that the return on investment would be enough to keep the two franchises afloat forever. Of course, many fans have become inundated with content from the MCU and recent Disney+ Star Wars outings, leaving the formulaic nature of both series to grate on the more casual fans. The reviews for the latest Marvel film, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has been widely negative, with some calling the Paul Rudd-led film the worst in Marvel’s history.
While The Mandalorian, whose third season is set to premiere on March 1st, maintains favorable reviews on Disney+, it has become the exception to the rule, as many Star Wars outings have been bashed for stretching the series too thin, such as Solo: A Star Wars Story and 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. With Disney feeling the heat from both Marvel and Star Wars fans, it seems the glory days of the two franchises may be in the rearview.
In recent years, Disney has employed a phase-based strategy for both Marvel and Star Wars installments, with Kevin Feige often taking the stage at Comic-Con events to announce a slate of upcoming projects, sometimes half a decade in advance. With Marvel installments currently planned out through 2026 with Avengers: Secret Wars, it’s anyone’s guess which projects may be canceled or shelved after production. In the past, it would be considered an incredibly bizarre move to sink so much time and money into a project only to seal it away, never to be seen, but with recent corporate moves such as DC’s Batgirl remaining unreleased after completion, the market has shifted into a new era of financial insecurity.
This change in business dealings is marked by Bob Iger’s position at the company as well. After serving nearly twenty years as Disney’s CEO, Iger stepped down into the role of Executive Chairman in 2020, ceding the CEO position of the Marvel and Star Wars owning company to Bob Chapek. Iger then returned to the role of CEO in November of 2022 at the request of Disney’s Board of Directors, following Chapek’s unexpected dismissal.
As Netflix continues to alienate its users with Dickensian business practices, HBO continues to pull fan-favorite content from its streaming library seemingly at random, and now Disney announcing huge budget cuts to both Marvel and Star Wars, it seems that we have entered into a dark time for big studio franchise films. Of course, this pattern follows the ebb and flow of Hollywood trends, which brought superhero films to prominence in the mid-2000s after years of considering the genre exclusively for children. Perhaps this change means that a new era is soon to dawn on Disney fans, allowing the Marvel and Star Wars films that peak through to maintain only the highest possible quality standards.
