Original Avengers and Additional Problems Disclosed
For the company's yearly retreat in Palm Springs, a group of
Marvel creatives, including studio head Kevin Feige, convened this past
September. Given how the leading superhero brand, which Disney has held since
2009, has transformed the entertainment industry in its image, most years would
have seen an air of confidence, if not outright cockiness.However, there was a
lot of anxiety surrounding this event as everyone at Marvel was hurting from a
string of on-screen setbacks, a legal dispute involving one of its greatest
stars, and concerns about the studio's audacious plan to expand the brand into
streaming.The actor Jonathan Majors was supposed to lead the next chapter of
the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he is now facing domestic abuse allegations
and will face a public trial in New York later this month. This made his
situation the most urgent topic of discussion at the retreat. Marvel has been
forced to reevaluate its plans to focus the next phase of its interconnected
slate of sequels, spinoffs, and series around Majors' evil character, Kang the
Conqueror, despite the actor's insistence that he is the victim due to the
potential loss of his lawsuit and the harm to his reputation. Executives
discussed backup plans at the Palm Springs meeting, such as switching to
another villain from a comic book, such as Dr. Doom. Any change, though, would
come with its own set of headaches: Majors was already well-known in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe, having starred as the movie's standout antagonist in
"Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" back in February. Additionally,
he has been positioned as the next big thing in the franchise for this season
of "Loki," especially in the finale that will show on November 9 and
establish Kang as the lead character of the fifth and final
"Avengers" movie in 2026. After watching the last episode of
"Loki," a prominent dealmaker declares, "Marvel is really
screwed with the whole Kang angle." "And because of the WGA strike,
they didn't get a chance to revise until quite recently. However, I don't see
how they can go with him.
Beyond the negative publicity surrounding Majors, Marvel's creative team is also coping with the November release of "The Marvels," a follow-up to 2019's huge hit
"Captain Marvel" that has been beset by protracted reshoots and now
seems destined to be a box office flop. All of this is an extraordinary turn of
events for a business that has experienced a practically continuous run of hits
since beginning to produce its own films on its own in 2008 with "Iron Man."
After that extraordinarily prosperous run, 2019's "Avengers: Endgame"
brought in $2.8 billion, setting a record for the studio that has made nearly
$30 billion from 32 films. It is never simple to reproduce such kind of
phenomena. Nonetheless, 2020 is where Marvel's present problems originated. At
that point, Disney's stock price was mandated to rise through an unending
supply of connected Marvel content for the studio's new streaming service,
thanks to the COVID epidemic.Disneyland+. There would never be a break in
superhero action, with a new TV show or movie hitting theaters or streaming at
all times.
The demands of producing so much content stressed the Marvel machinery, but the resultant
tsunami of spandex turned out to be too good to be true. Additionally, the
requirement to elucidate a complex plot across numerous distinct series, films,
and platforms resulted in a disorganized narrative that confused audiences.