With Marvel Studios’ “Fantastic Four: The First Steps” almost upon us, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige is now finally out there doing interviews and in the process discussing a bunch of stuff about the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Speaking with Variety, he spoke about the overall plan for the company and confirms there are currently seven years of plans in place for the MCU – going right through to 2032.
The studio is determined not to make the mistakes of Phase 4 & 5 again with pumping out too much content, saying they “produced 50 hours of stories between 2007 and 2019” but in the past six years had produced “well over 100 hours of stories — in half the time. That’s too much.”
It resulted in a focus on expansion which he says “led people to say, ‘It used to be fun, but now do I have to know everything about all of these?’ For the first time ever, quantity trumped quality. ”
That over supply he thinks is the main reason Marvel has faced the problems it has in recent years, adding that: “Look at ‘Superman’. It’s clearly not superhero fatigue, right?”.
Of the just-opened Superman, which is now up to $407 million worldwide at the box office, he says: “I liked it a lot. I love you just jump right into it. You don’t know who Mister Terrific is? Tough, you’ll figure it out. This is a fully fleshed out world.”
To get the MCU’s mojo back, he confirms the film’s output is slowing to just three films a year, while TV will be just a single live-action show per year. Those shows will also be much more akin to Marvel’s 2010 series – namely having far less overlap with the feature films so won’t be necessary to watch.
As an example, he cited the events of the final act of “Thunderbolts” as having no impact on the second season of “Daredevil: Born Again”. He also doesn’t want a repeat of this year where both “Ironheart” and “Wonder Man” are being released after sitting for years on the shelves.
He says they have no intention of changing their approach to filmmaking with changes and ‘improvements’ coming throughout the process, but they are tightening budgets.
He also confirms (via Deadline) that the company will “reset singular timelines” and essentially reboot the MCU following the events of “Avengers: Secret Wars”. However he’s not a fan of that word: “Reboot is a scary word. Reboot can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Reset, singular timeline — we’re thinking along those lines. X-Men is where that will happen”.
He says if “Avengers: Endgame” was about endings, then “Avengers: Secret Wars” is about beginnings…. “it very, very much sets us up for the future.”
