Superman<\/a>, it\u2019s clearly not superhero fatigue,\u201d asserts the Marvel Studios producer and president who believes that comic book movies are poised for better days. In the wake of Thunderbolts* and Captain America: Brave New World tanking ($415M WW), the MCU is finally looking at their first $100M+ opener for 2025 in The Fantastic Four: First Steps.<\/p>\n\n\tStill Feige doesn\u2019t have any regrets with regard to the overabundance of the MCU on Disney+ and in theaters. It\u2019s the only franchise in the world that can boast a $31 billion gross. While the Bob Chapek-led era of Disney championed a multi-billion overspend on streaming content, the Bob Iger era has been vigilant about course-correcting that, realizing too much of a good thing can certainly damage the first vital window of any Disney movie, that being theatrical.<\/p>\n
\n\tFrom the start of the MCU through 2019\u2019s Avengers: Endgame, the second-highest grossing movie of all time at $2.79 billion, the comic book studio has made 50 hours of content total. Post-Endgame through next weekend\u2019s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the MCU counts 102 hours made between films and series. The number increases to 127 hours when counting animated series.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe experimentation and the evolution of, I\u2019m proud of and wouldn\u2019t change,\u201d says Feige who counts WandaVision and Loki as major wins for the MCU on Disney+. \u201cIt\u2019s the expansion that is certainly what devalued [the studio and its content].\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tStill, it was worth the gamble given the bottomless well: \u201cWe always had more characters that people were asking us about than we could possibly make,\u201d he adds. <\/p>\n
\n\tExplains Feige, \u201cComing out of Avengers: Endgame, the plan was \u2018What do you do with this success?\u2019 So much of our storytelling had been built for that finale on Endgame that thinking about the future was purely about, \u2018Well, what do we do with this success now? Do we do more of the same? I guess.\u2019 We had sequels lined up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIf you take success and don\u2019t experiment with it, and don\u2019t risk with it, then it\u2019s not worth it. That\u2019s why Eternals was first up. Let\u2019s take something that nobody knows, that has these giant celestial mythic characters and work with a filmmaker like Chlo\u00e9 [Zhao] who sat around pitching us the history of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen it came to the grand MCU crisscross plan across Disney+ and theatrical falling apart, The Marvels served as the wake-up call. Potential moviegoers stayed away from the sequel to the $1.1 billion-grossing Captain Marvel. Marvel learned that moviegoers\u2019 unfamiliarity with Disney+ series characters Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau prevented them from committing to The Marvels.<\/p>\n
\n\tPost-morteming MCU\u2019s two lackluster movies this year, Feige says Captain America: Brave New World didn\u2019t work as it \u201cwas the first without Chris Evans.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThunderbolts* was a very good movie, but nobody knew that title, and many of those characters were from shows. There was that residual effect of [audiences going], \u2018I guess I had to have seen these other shows to understand who this is?’\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tEven though Thunderbolts* didn\u2019t hit a nerve, there\u2019s still plans for the antiheroes to appear in the next two Russo Brothers\u2019 Avengers movies.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn building a better mousetrap at Marvel, Feige says the studio has scaled down their production costs greatly. They took notice of the VFX spectacle that Gareth Edwards made with The Creator, which was shot in Thailand, and met with that pic\u2019s below-the-line heads to learn how they pulled off such efficiency. Also, Marvel was pushed to scrutinize their budgets more coming out of the pandemic, which required increased safety protocols.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe movies made over the last two years have been upwards of a third cheaper than they were two years before that, i.e. Deadpool & Wolverine, Captain America, Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four are all significantly cheaper than films from 2022 and 2023, and they would have been even cheaper if it wasn\u2019t for the strikes,\u201d he explains. <\/p>\n
\n\tThe studio boss also questioned whether artificial intelligence was the answer to keeping VFX dazzle up, and costs down.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIs AI going to do that? I don\u2019t know that,\u201d says Feige.<\/p>\n
\n\tMarvel has long held friends and family test screenings on the Burbank Disney lot. Given the MCU\u2019s string of bombs, they looked under the hood to see whether their sausage-making process was still intact. So, Marvel began testing their movies through National Research Group-recruited screenings. At the end of the day, per Feige, both the Marvel and NRG screenings yielded similar results. The studio has long believed in family and friends-recruited screenings in order to keep the content of their pics secret. Feige remains a big believer in testing: \u201cThat\u2019s how you know when jokes work, when you\u2019re not high on your own supply.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFans love a great Coke vs. Pepsi war, and that also extends to Marvel vs. DC. Though MCU alum James Gunn<\/a> is off revitalizing DC Studios, there\u2019s no bad blood per Feige with his Guardians of the Galaxy hitmaker. <\/p>\n\n\t\u201cI think James has had an influence on us, and we had one on him,\u201d beams Feige about Gunn\u2019s success with Superman. \u201cWe texted. I was telling him how much I loved the movie. And he said \u2018Wouldn\u2019t exist without you guys.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd at a time when theatrical is being taken hostage by streaming, it pays to be brothers-in-arms. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI think studios see every other studio as competition,\u201d says Feige. \u201cRight now in our business, I root for every movie. I want every movie to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMaking less.\u201d If there\u2019s a cure for superhero fatigue for Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige, particularly in the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":79054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,956,54348,10953,29146,9180,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-79053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-james-gunn","10":"tag-kevin-feige","11":"tag-marvel-studios","12":"tag-mcu","13":"tag-superman","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}