Ever since Disney+ was announced, fans waited eagerly for Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige to announce shows for Disney's new streaming service. Fans had only expected maybe a handful of shows to be revealed at a time; however, there are currently eleven shows planned to release on Disney+ with plenty more expected to be on the way.
It was reported in late-November that Marvel Studios would be shifting their focus towards their streaming shows, with a source from The Hollywood Reporter saying “the movie machinery is well established” so “ramping them (Disney+ series) up takes a lot of focus.” Now, Kevin Feige has said this would indeed be the case for Marvel Studios—starting with WandaVision .
CONFIRMATION
In the latest issue of Emmy , Kevin Feige confirms that streaming for the studio is “100 percent the future” and that WandaVision is “something you can't get in a movie.”
“Streaming is 100 percent the future and where consumers want to watch things... And hopefully they'll want to watch our longform narrative series. An experience like WandaVision is something you can't get in a movie.”
However, Feige makes sure not to dismiss theaters or movies entirely, saying that just like with streaming, audiences go to the movies “for things you can't get on streaming.”
“You go to movies for things you can't get on streaming, and you go to streaming for things you can't get in a theater. And of course, everything in a theater goes to streaming eventually.”
WHAT THIS MEANS
As Kevin Feige says, just because Marvel Studios will put more focus on streaming doesn't mean that they won't be paying attention to movies. What is interesting is that Feige says that fans "go to movies for things you can't get on streaming,” which could be referring to anything from the theater experience as a whole to a larger production quality per-minute of screen-time.
One possibility is that the movies may be acting as bombastic finishes or blowout crossover events, with the streaming shows acting more like the slow build-up to those blowouts. For instance, it's well known at this point by fans that WandaVision and Loki will lead directly into Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness . The same can be assumed about Ms. Marvel and Secret Invasion leading into Captain Marvel 2 .
Basically, the Disney+ series will be acting as the build-up for far larger and more focused movie productions that, as Kevin Feige says, “you can't get on streaming.”
