Bob Iger took charge as CEO of Disney last November and now some of his plans for the future of the studio are being revealed – especially his intentions for two of the studio’s most valuable assets with Marvel and “Star Wars”.
Speaking at a Morgan Stanley conference this week, Iger was asked a question about the overall health of Lucasfilm, Marvel and Pixar as brands for the studio.
In regards to Marvel, he indicates that the days of heroes getting multiple sequels may be numbered as he’s indicating the studio needs to keep things fresh:
“There are 7,000 characters, there are a lot more stories to tell. What we have to look at Marvel is not necessarily the volume of Marvel stories we’re telling, but how many times we go back to the well on certain characters. Sequels typically work well for us. Do you need a third and a fourth, for instance, or is it time to turn to other characters?”
This can’t help but be seen as a response to both “Thor: Love and Thunder” and more recently “Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania” which scored tepid reviews and soft box-office by Marvel standards.
Iger continues saying new faces are going to be the MCU formula going forward and people should expect less sequels:
“There’s nothing in any way inherently off in terms of the Marvel brand. I think we just have to look at what characters and stories we’re mining. If you look at the trajectory of Marvel in the next five years, there will be a lot of newness. We’re going to turn back to the Avengers franchise with a whole new set of Avengers, for example.”
Turning his attention to “Star Wars,” Iger says Disney is being “careful” about that franchise’s future, especially on the film front:
“‘Star Wars’ we made three what we called saga films, which is obviously the successors to George Lucas’s first six. They did very well at the box office, tremendously well as a matter of fact. We’ve made two so-called standalones in ‘Rogue One’ and ‘Solo’.
‘Rogue One’ did quite well, ‘Solo’ was a little disappointing to us. It gave us pause just to think maybe the cadence was a little too aggressive. And so we decided to pull back a bit. We still are developing ‘Star Wars’ films. We’re going to make sure that when we make one, that it’s the right one, so we are being very careful there.”
Those comments follow in the wake of the news earlier this week that both Patty Jenkins and Kevin Feige’s “Star Wars” film projects had been scrapped, whilst Taika Waititi’s and Damon Lindelof’s are still in development.
Iger’s main focus now is on spending smarter rather than more, and reducing costs that have skyrocketed in recent years in an unsustainable way and so “reducing the expense per content” is important.
He also indicates the amount of content is an issue and so it’s also about: “understanding how much volume we need, reducing how much we make” along with maximising the value of what they have.
