Marvel’s changing TV series strategy for Disney+
Hold the curtain call. Marvel’s not done with TV yet.
The internet has been abuzz lately that Marvel is going to stop producing live-action series for Disney+. MR_MaxiMor44 on Reddit summarized these fears well in their post: Could Marvel be done with Live Action shows?
With Daredevil viewership on the decline during the last season, Wonder Man being cancelled, and VisionQuest being the supposed last "mainline MCU miniseries", along with pretty much no other live action shows being announced or development. I do wonder if they might just be done with live action shows.
The thinking here is that animation like X-Men ’97 is doing well on Disney+ but other shows are not. There’s also been a lot of chatter about a couple rumored series getting converted to movies. No one really knows at this point, and that silence is creating a vacuum being filled by fear and worry.
It’s clear that Marvel’s TV strategy is changing, but it hasn’t sat right with me that they would get out of live-action series entirely. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s misaligned with Josh D’Amaro’s recent comments that Disney is “just playing a different game.” That game, he means, is building out Disney+ as a connected home for all things Disney.
Now, the news is circling from Julia Alexander’s updates in Wednesday’s edition of the Puck News newsletter What I’m Hearing… (paywalled, alas with no real gift link to share).
What’s up with Marvel’s Disney+ slate?: Among all the news coming out of D23, the biennial event where Disney superfans pay hundreds of dollars to watch trailers, it didn’t escape notice that not a single new Marvel show was announced for Disney+. “I guess our plan is just Spider-Man!” one executive texted me on Sunday, half-kidding. In fact, I’ve learned that there are multiple live-action Marvel series in development for Disney+, with announcements expected soon.
Announcements expected soon. We can all breathe a sigh of relief when we hear it straight from Marvel themselves, when we're finally able to begin to understand what their new strategy is. Until then, we’ll keep asking why and speculating.
Alexander has some thoughts about the why herself.
The problem, of course, is that accolades for boundary-pushing shows like Ms. Marvel or Moon Knight don’t necessarily translate to new audiences. To wit: Daredevil: Born Again’s second season pulled a 86 percent audience score on RT, among the best any Marvel title has earned, but never cracked Nielsen’s originals chart. […] But the era of big-budget, niche swings is ending. Why spend $50 million on a show that delights only fans who were already subscribed, and who were never going to cancel in the first place?