Marvel boss Kevin Feige on why so many of the studio’s releases have bombed

Marvel boss Kevin Feige is well aware that the superhero studio has been having, at best, an inconsistent, at worst, a bad run since the release of the $US2.7 billion Avengers: Endgame, the second highest grossing movie in history.

In a wide-ranging press roundtable he hosted, as covered by Hollywood trades including Variety, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter, Feige was candid about the missteps and misadventures that has plagued Marvel for the past six years.

Feige took the opportunity to promote the release of Fantastic Four: First Steps this week, and emphasised that it was a “no homework required” film which does not tie into any of preceding 38 movies or multiple streaming series – “It’s literally not connected to anything that was made before”.

That’s been the problem with Marvel movies, or at least that’s the problem many audiences have had with Marvel movies. There have been too many and they’ve been too referential.

It’s something Feige is ready to acknowledge – in the years from Iron Man in 2008 to Avengers: Endgame in 2019, Marvel made 50 hours of movies, but in the six years since, that total, between film, streaming series and animation, jumped to 127 hours.

“That’s too much,” he said, and added that it devalued the output. Those first three years after Endgame was also when former Disney chief executive Bob Chapek put out a company-wide edict that the then-fledgling streaming platform Disney+ was a hungry beast that must be fed.

“It was a big company push,” Feige explained. “And it doesn’t take too much to push us to go, ‘People have been asking for Ms Marvel for years, and now we can do it? Do it! Oscar Isaac wants to be Moon Knight? Do it!’

“So, there was a mandate that we were put in the middle of, but we also thought it’d be fun to bring these life.”

That breakneck pace has slowed down considerably. Fantastic Four: First Steps may be the third Marvel Cinematic Universe movie out in 2025, but there won’t be another between it and Avengers: Doomsday in December 2026. There’s also only more live-action Marvel streaming show coming for the rest of the year, Wonder Man in December.

In the future, there would be as few as one live-action TV series a year, and they will have less connective tissue to the film side. “I think allowing a TV show to be a TV show is what we’re returning to,” Feige said, citing the approach before the TV and film divisions were combined in late 2019.

Rather than getting diehard fans excited about the crossovers between the TV shows and the movies, it had a blocking effect for most more casual audiences. Feige admitted that it started to feel like homework.

“It’s the expansion that I think led people to say, ‘Do I have to see all of these? It used to be fun, but now do I have to know everything about all of these?’.”

He said the 2023 sequel The Marvels, which has to date the lowest grossing MCU box office with $US206 million, was the hardest hit by this conundrum. He added, “People are like, ‘OK, I recognise her from a billion-dollar movie. But who are those other two? I guess they were in some TV show, I’ll skip it’.”

The Marvels was a three-lead title centred on Brie Larsen’s Captain Marvel, the aforementioned billion-dollar character from her 2019 film, and Ms Marvel/Kamala Khan, from the Ms Marvel TV show, and Monica Rambeau, a supporting character from series WandaVision.

The Marvel boss also addressed why the studio’s two most recent releases, Thunderbolts and Captain America: Brave New World both underperformed at the box office (both finished around $US400 million).

On the well-reviewed Thunderbolts, which was an ensemble of anti-heroes collected from other MCU projects, almost all from the post-Endgame era, it was that same homework issue.

“Thunderbolts I thought was a very, very good movie, but nobody knew that title many of those characters were from a (TV) show.”

As for Captain America: Brave New World, it didn’t work because it was “the first without Chris Evans”.

He also said the production costs of the films have been up to a third cheaper than the films that were in production in 2022 and 2023, naming Deadpool & Wolverine, Brave New World, Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four.

Feige also revealed the X-Men will be recast for its upcoming movie to be directed by Thunderbolts’ Jake Schreier. The studio boss was careful to stress that it was a “reset” rather than a reboot – “reboot is a scary word” – given the narrative opportunities that exist in movies with multiverses and timelines.

However, this will happen the release of Avengers: Doomsday, which has already confirmed several of 2000s Fox era X-Men actors will reprise their roles including Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, Rebecca Romjin, James Marsden, Alan Cumming and Kelsey Grammer.

The big question on everyone’s lips, given the musical chairs game that is Hollywood studios is how much longer Feige will stand at the bridge of the Marvel ship.

Feige, 53, has been involved with Marvel screen projects since the 2000 X-Men movie, when he worked as an associate producer for Lauren Shuler Donner, and was named president of production at Marvel Studios in 2007 in the lead-up to Iron Man.

He has a little less than two years left on his contract but he said, “Do I want to be making big movies for big audiences in 10 or 15 years from now? Yes, absolutely. That’s all I want to do.

“Marvel’s a great way to do that for me right now. But I hope to make big movies for lots of people forever more.”

Fantastic Four: First Steps is in cinemas on July 24