Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige addressed the one major problem he's seen with many of the MCU's movies and TV shows from recent years. While the MCU still ranks as the highest-grossing franchise in cinema history and continues to add new content every year, it has not seen the same level of consistent success as it did in years past.
Kevin Feige criticized the Marvel Cinematic Universe for being too inaccessible to audiences who have not been keeping up with the story for years. During an era in which the Multiverse Saga has more releases in four years than the Infinity Saga did in 11 years, the current on-screen Marvel universe is a lot (sometimes too much) to handle for those who haven't watched the majority of recent projects.
Marvel Studios' top executive is currently leading an internal overhaul for the MCU, making fewer TV shows and stand-alone stories that don't require extensive knowledge of the franchise's history.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Feige recently told colleagues that watching all of the MCU's new TV shows and movies was starting to feel more like homework than entertainment. This was partially in an effort to placate Disney (the MCU's parent company), which depended on Marvel to help boost Disney+ subscribers and to maintain a strong, steady output of interconnected superhero stories on the streaming service.
This led to not only viewers feeling overwhelmed, but Feige and his team also having their resources stretched thin, which then diluted the quality of many recent MCU releases.
Currently, Marvel and its top executive are working to get the MCU back on track through a major overhaul. Along with only releasing about three movies and two TV shows per year, scaling back on output, Feige is focused more heavily on the MCU's movie slate after films like Captain America: Brave New World underperformed in theaters.
Additionally, a former Marvel employee touched on Disney's recent strategy of populating Disney+ with as much content as possible. According to that source, "the strategy became just expansion, expansion, expansion" after the Infinity Saga.
Feige reportedly told industry colleagues he went along with that plan because of his ambition to get new stories out and to be an "excellent corporate citizen."
However, this plan overwhelmed the studio. Feige had to make countless more decisions on a daily basis, even with multiple showrunners and executives overseeing each individual new project. He was also difficult to get a hold of for feedback on each project, with that feedback sometimes being irrelevant due to how tight deadlines were to get shows out to the public.
This reliance on interconnected storytelling changed in recent years, as referenced by Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier, who recently told Games Radar about his and Feige's conversations to ensure the movie would work for audiences who had not seen any other MCU movies.
"For all of [the characters], we tried to start fresh," Schreier said, referencing over half a dozen lead characters who were last seen in previous MCU projects.
2025 is the final year fans will see this kind of quantity released under the Marvel Studios umbrella after Disney CEO Bob Iger returned to his post, replacing former successor Bob Chapek. This year will bring three new movies and six new Disney+ shows before the MCU's overall output is reduced in 2026.
Currently, Marvel Studios is busy promoting the release of Thunderbolts*, the final movie in the MCU's Phase 5 slate, which is now in theaters. Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova and a unique team of misfits are brought together in this film to take down the ultra-powerful Sentry, who is said to be one of the most powerful villains in MCU history.
How Will Kevin Feige & Marvel Studios Adjust Moving Forward
As noted, Marvel Studios is in the midst of a major change in strategy, which will lead to a more streamlined and centralized release schedule in the coming years. Along with that, the specific projects released are likely to not be as necessary for fans to have watched ahead of each upcoming release.
This was already seen in Thunderbolts*, which took the time to touch on all of its leading characters in order to catch fans up with their MCU journeys to that point. It will also be especially important moving forward into Phase 6, which will arguably be the franchise's most monumental slate of movies ever.
Specifically, Avengers: Doomsday will take a bold step forward with at least 27 confirmed cast members, whose characters will come from as many as six or seven different universes. This will go even further in Avengers: Secret Wars, which is teased to be the biggest crossover event in comic-book movie history.
While much of Phase 6 is still being kept a mystery (particularly on the Disney+ side), the expectation is that everything coming up will be much more digestible for those who are not diehard MCU fans.
