By Marvel Studios has only one film release this year – the R-rated “Deadpool & Wolverine” – which comes in the wake of an underwhelming last few years of Marvel movies.
Audience dissatisfaction with the brand resulted in some straight up failures last year with “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” decidedly underperforming and “The Marvels” outright bombing.
Added to that the overwhelming volume of a glut of Marvel TV series which, with the odd exception (eg. “Loki,” “Ms. Marvel”), failed to achieve much acclaim.
Disney has already acknowledged they were pushing quantity over quality, with CEO Bob Iger outlining this morning Marvel’s output being reduced to two or three films per year and two shows per year.
Speaking about their recent efforts, Marvel Studios co-president Louis D’Esposito tells Empire:
“It’s been a rough time. If we just stayed on top, that would have been the worst thing that could have happened to us. We took a little hit, we’re coming back strong. Maybe when you do too much, you dilute yourself a little bit. We’re not going to do that anymore. We learned our lesson.”
Marvel boss Kevin Feige adds to the outlet that he welcomes being in the position of having to prove himself and Marvel again with audiences just as they had to back in the Phase 1 days:
“It’s nice to be able to rally behind one feature project this year. I’m much more comfortable being the underdog. I prefer being able to surprise, and exceed expectations. So it does seem like the last year, which has not been ideal, has set us up well for that.”
He also says that the jokes about Deadpool proclaiming himself to be Marvel Jesus have new depth in the wake of the MCU’s recent failures:
“Some of the lines that Ryan and his writers and Shawn worked on have taken on more of a meaning. You’d have to live under a rock not to know that the last few Marvel movies have failed to ignite the world in the way that so many did. We do come along at an interesting time. And we are decidedly something different. Whether it is of Messianic proportions, time will tell.”
“Deadpool & Wolverine” hits cinemas at the end of July with the sole other MCU live-action release this year being the “Agatha” TV series sometime in the Fall.
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