Disney CEO Bob Iger says that Marvel Studios’ “Thunderbolts” is the prime example of Disney’s new ‘quality over quantity’ approach when it comes to Marvel fare.
Speaking with Wall Street analysts about the studio’s quarterly results, Iger says the solid results for the first three months of this year by the studio are a result of the Mouse House’s new approach with fewer works and more separation between film and TV.
This time last year, he said Marvel planned to “reduce output and focus more on quality” with the plan to reduce their output to around two TV series a year instead of four, and reduce their film output from four a year to two or three.
The aim is essentially for fewer projects, and fewer flops, turning each of the launches into more of an event:
“In our zeal to flood our streaming platform with more content, we turned to all of our creative engines, including Marvel, and had them produce a lot more […] We’ve also learned over time that quantity does not necessarily beget quality.
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 it will result in better quality. I think the first and best example of that is ‘Thunderbolts.'”
In terms of the overall Disney slate, he says he has a lot of confidence in it, saying it’s “as strong as any slate that I’ve seen in a long time, since — well in 2019 I think was our best year — the strongest I’ve seen since then.”
That slate includes “Lilo & Stitch,” “Elio,” “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” “Tron: Ares,” “Zootopia 2,” “Avatar: Fire and Ash” this year and then “Avengers: Doomsday,” “The Mandalorian & Grogu” and the live-action “Moana” next year.
Source: THR
