Bob Iger Questions Marvel Sequels; Being ‘ Very Careful’ With ‘Star Wars’

Disney Chief Bob Iger announced on Thursday that the company is meticulously analyzing all aspects of its content business, encompassing both the film and television.

During a Morgan Stanley conference, (courtesy of the Hollywood Reporter) Iger stated that Disney will be focusing on examining their spending on content and the number of projects they produce moving forward.

In addition, Iger made candid and insightful remarks regarding Disney’s management of Marvel Studios and Star Wars, indicating that the company is thoughtfully considering its strategies for these brands in the future.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania‘s lackluster box office performance is just one notable example of the challenges faced by Iger. The film is projected to earn less in North America than the previous Ant-Man and the Wasp film, and less worldwide than either of the previous Ant-Man movies, with a total of $187 million domestically and $420 million globally at the end of its third weekend.

“What we have to look at at Marvel is not necessarily the volume of Marvel storytelling, but how many times we go back to the well on certain characters,” Iger said. “Sequels typically work well for us, but do you need a third or a fourth, for instance? Or is it time to turn to other characters? There’s nothing in any way inherently off in terms of the Marvel brand. I think we just have to look at what characters and stories we are mining.”

Iger offered a tiny glimpse of what fans can anticipate from a new Avengers team that will be at the forefront of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty in 2025.

Iger said: “And if you look at the trajectory of Marvel over the next five years, you’ll see a lot of newness. Now, we’re going to turn back to the Avengers franchise, but with a whole set of different Avengers, as an example.

In terms of the Star Wars brand, and given the recent news that both the Kevin Feige and Patty Jenkins projects are not actively being developed, Iger added that Lucasfilm is being “very careful” about the next movie that takes place in the Star Wars universe.

“Star Wars, we made three what we called saga films, which is obviously the successors to George Lucas’ first six. They did very well at the box office — tremendously well as a matter of fact. We’ve made two so-called stand-alones in Rogue One and Solo. Rogue One did quite well, Solo was a little disappointing to us. It gave us pause just to think maybe the cadence was a little too aggressive. And so we decided to pull back a bit. We still are developing Star Wars films. We’re going to make sure that when we make one, that it’s the right one, so we are being very careful there.”

Despite facing some setbacks, there is still a great deal of anticipation surrounding the Star Wars franchise, which has been a significant cultural phenomenon since the release of the first movie in 1977. Lucasfilm has not released any new Star Wars movies since the 2019 film The Rise of Skywalker, which received mixed reviews from both critics and fans.