The reception to the recent MCU releases hasn't been as enthusiastic as the Infinity Saga. While the majority of the films did solid numbers at the box office, none of them reached the billion-dollar mark with the exception of Spider-Man: No Way Home.
It's also a similar case for the TV shows on Disney+ since some of them have received mixed reviews and the viewership is not as high as they wanted it to be. WandaVision also remains to be the only series that received Emmy nominations in the top categories.
Whether you agree with the assessment or not, there's no doubt that there has been a perception of decline in recent MCU releases compared to the previous saga. It doesn't help that they are more spread out than ever in terms of producing content.
Now, the CEO of Disney has chimed in on the issue and it sounds like he has also recognized the problems and sentiments from fans and critics.
Bob Iger Gets Honest About the Multiple Projects That Marvel Studios is Producing
As reported by Variety, speaking with CNBC's David Faber at the Sun Valley Conference, Disney CEO Bob Iger addressed the box office disappointments of their recent films where he blamed it on the expectations that they set for the audience by offering a lot of streaming content.
"There have been some disappointments. We would have liked some of our more recent releases to perform better," he said.
"It’s reflective not as a problem from a personnel perspective, but I think in our zeal to basically grow our content significantly to serve mostly our streaming offerings, we ended up taxing our people way beyond — in terms of their time and their focus — way beyond where they had been."
Iger singled out Marvel Studios as an example since they churned out a lot of content for streaming and believed that it affected the attention towards the theatrical releases.
He added, "Marvel’s a great example of that. They had not been in the TV business at any significant level. Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series, and frankly, it diluted focus and attention. That is, I think, more of the cause than anything."
We have heard reports that Marvel Studios has been reevaluating its plans, especially on the TV show side. We've also noticed that they are also slowing down their production on the TV projects as we rarely hear any major news about its development, unlike the theatrical films.
It's not surprising at this point if Iger already discussed his concerns with Kevin Feige and tasked him to reduce the TV output and focus more on the theatrical projects where it is more valuable from a business perspective.
It would be interesting to see what kind of definitive changes will they make in the coming months or years towards the MCU content across film and TV and it looks like this will be the beginning of the changes that we will witness soon.
Also Read: Secret Invasion: Martin Freeman Gets Honest About His Character's Skrull Twist
For now, you can catch new episodes of Secret Invasion premiering every Wednesday on Disney+. You can check more details about it here.