Disney CEO Announces New Plan for Marvel Amid Faltering Box Office Numbers

Disney is reportedly planning to scale back on its Marvel Studios content in coming years, the company’s CEO Bob Iger told analysts during a recent quarterly earnings call. However, the current slate of projects in the pipeline for this year won’t be impacted, notably the upcoming summer blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine.

Last November, the studio’s much-hyped The Marvels flopped, generating an international opening weekend total of just $110 million on a budget of nearly $275 million.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Iger said that Disney is finally moving away from “a vestige, basically a desire in the past to increase volume,” and that he’s been “working hard with the studio to reduce output and focus more on quality, that’s particularly true with Marvel.”

But the good news for fans is that even with fewer shows and movies in the future, there will still be plenty of Marvel content to look forward to.

“We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four, and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two or at the maximum three,” Iger explained. “And we’re working hard on what that path is, we’ve got a couple of good films in [2025] and then we’re heading to more Avengers, which we’re extremely excited about.”

Iger was referring to the upcoming Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, which is currently scheduled to be released on May 1, 2026.

“Overall I feel great about the slate,” he added. “It’s something that I’ve committed to spending more and more time on, the team is one that I have tremendous confidence in and the IP that we’re mining, including all the sequels that we’re doing is second to none.”

Iger’s recent comments echo what he expressed last summer, when he announced that the company would be pulling back on Marvel and Star Wars movies and TV shows in the coming years.

“You pull back not just to focus, but also as part of our cost containment initiative. Spending less on what we make, and making less,” he told CNBC at the time.