Is Disney Releasing Too Much MCU Content?

In a wolrd where content upon content is the way many streaming services go many companies arm themselves with the rights to comics and various other Intellectual Properties (IPs) to turn into series or movies to release on their platforms. One of the first major moves when it comes to aquire IPs was when Disney bought the rights to both Star Wars & Marvel Entertainment which this will focus on the later.

Bought for $4 billion in 2009 Disney have more then made their money back and then some. Having the largest media franchise will help massivly when getting people to pay for a product and as we have seen even in the last 12 months that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is still making big money. At box office Spider-Man: No Way Home made $1.901 billion (before its rerelease, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness made $954.9 million and as of the date of writing (14th August) Thor: Love and Thunder has made $720.5 million all huge numbers in a time where cinemas are open post lockdowns. What I want to talk about isn't in relation to as many use their Twitter to do in hating on MCU content because it's the in thing to do and you get precious Twitter interactions or the worsening issues between studios and VFX artists (yes if you bother to read past the headline about Marvel you'll see it's an issue in the entire industry which needs to be fixed) I want to directly cover how much Marvel content is being churned out and my overall thoughts of continuing down this path. 

First of all we need a clear breakdown in the amount of content per phase of MCU content. It is as follows:

Phase One: 6 Movies
Phase Two: 6 Movies
Phase Three: 11 Movies
Phase Four: 7 Movies & 8 TV Shows
Phase Five (as it stands): 6 Movies & 5 TV Shows 

I'll start by saying Phase Five will likely have a minimum of 6 TV Shows I feel that Armour Wars will fall into this Phase. As you can see when TV Shows are factored in Phase Four has over double the content that Phase One did. Obviously the more something grows in demand the more you make but we've seen a large increase. At point we would get a film in February, July & November to maximise profit but now it does feel like we have something new every month to six weeks. Some would say that's a lot, content on top of content will lead to burnout which makes sense. How many times can you watch something new from the same studio almost week in week out show ends next one begins almost right away before it becomes a chore? I feel this is a by-product of streaming services battling it out. If Disney can keep churning out content focusing on Marvel & Star Wars they feel they are more likely to keep and gain subscribers, Disney Plus has seen a rapid increase in subscribers with this stratergy to keep having new content to make sure people tune in. It's brave if you go for short term gain I just wonder what happens when you run out of actors and characters.

However, you don't have a vast catalogue like Marvel you can use this as a chance to have characters you don't think would make big money with a movie. Sure they might not gain subscribers but more likely to retain them. It allows characters that might not have featured in the MCU to have shows and if it works then you can use them in films. Look, if Disney Plus was not a thing I do not think Daredevil comes back especially with a huge series reboot. It allows more expiermentation using such a vast back catalogue of characters, if anything it allows more depth to be given to the unvierse they have created as a whole. 

Maybe it’s a bit of a weaker point, lesser known heroes like Shang-Chi and Ant-Man both have had film releases which have gone onto gross in the $600 million region and had sequels either released or in development. I think that having episodic releases may benefit some characters (although the length of the series can be debated if they’re long enough to get all the points they want across). I look at Moon Knight for example would a run time of 150 minutes be able to cover all the series did? I don’t think so and due to it the character feels more fleshed out. Obviously it depends on the character, with Captain America: New World Order officially being announced I expect a plethora of hot take tweets about how it’s not explained why Sam Wilson is Captain America which in the 2 of 100s of tweets which are genuine it is something that a two pronged release slate of cinema and on demand creates, it’s the job of the writers and storytellers to link these. Wanda in Doctor Strange with no knowledge of WandaVision I imagine it’s one hell of a character jump. However, I imagine this will be something they will have to get better at, what happens when you reintroduce Loki or any new introduced hero’s like Moon Knight or She-Hulk do you just not bother? I dunno if we want to move to big Avengers team ups again we will need to do that at some point.

All in all I think it’s too soon to make a definitive conclusion when it comes to if the MCU is releasing too much content. Numbers in Disney Plus remain at the expected level, box office numbers are still high we don't see a definitive drop off which would indicate this would be the case. I think this needs a longer time period to fully judge it's only been around 18 months since WandaVision's first episode so maybe bournout is not yet felt. Either way I think this will be an interesting point to revisit at some point to see what does happen in terms of demand and viewerships and box office numbers but for the moment with how new this idea of MCU shows that are fully canon we will have to wait to see full public response as these shows and movies keep releasing.