Disney boss Bob Iger has been chatting about Thunderbolts, and how it’s the start of Marvel dialling back on quantity over quality again.
Disney CEO Bob Iger is having a far bumpier second tenure in the top job than he managed in his first era of leading the company. Specific to this story, under his watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe has released some of its weaker entries (although some were moving under his predecessor, Bob Chapek), in part due to a strategy of requiring umpteen Marvel productions for the Disney+ streaming service too.
Lots of TV shows and lots of movies meant not quite a killing, but certainly an injuring, of one of Disney’s golden geese.
Over the last weekend, things seemed to turn something of a corner. The release of Thunderbolts, a movie that Marvel has basically unleashed a big spoiler for in its second week of marketing, was greeted by enthusiastic reviews and good box office. Not great box office, but good box office. Moreover, there’s a tonal shift in the film, and Bob Iger has been bigging this up in his latest call with Wall Street analysts.
And he’s admitted that mistakes were made.
“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”, he said.
“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.”
Iger is also bullish on the state of Disney’s upcoming movie slate, which has had a few bumps too in recent times. It now has new Star Wars films finally happening, two new Avengers movies on the way, sequels to Frozen, Toy Story, Coco and Zootropolis amongst others. And basically, a bunch of films that should enjoy better box office than Disney has been managing over the past few years.
You can read more of Iger’s remarks, here.
