Is Marvel’s ‘Cure’ For Superhero Fatigue Fewer Releases?
Last year seemed like it was a never-ending cycle of superhero movies and TV shows being pumped out. Sure, one can argue that most superhero movies generate big headlines and…
Last year seemed like it was a never-ending cycle of superhero movies and TV shows being pumped out. Sure, one can argue that most superhero movies generate big headlines and obviously big money, but does "superhero fatigue" mean anything to these big companies?
What Exactly Is “Superhero Fatigue”?
Many people define superhero fatigue as people claiming to be bored of superhero content because there is just too much content. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, unfortunately, got caught up in this, especially last year. The animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (from Sony) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 both came out last year. Following Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
It's worth mentioning that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 crushed it at the box office. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. That same year, DC Comics also had a few movies come out. These include Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom and Shazam!. This doesn’t even include the shows that came out.
Marvel To Slow Down
Variety reported that Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company is “shrinking the MCU” with a new mission to drop the number of Marvel TV series to two a year and the film output to no more than three movies per year.
Iger said this is part of Disney’s overall strategy to reduce output and focus on quality, a strategy “that’s particularly true with Marvel.”
Marvel Studios Co-President Louis D’Esposito and Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige are addressing the rough patch the studio has been through over the last few years.
“If we just stayed on top, that would have been the worst thing that could have happened to us,” D’Esposito said in an interview with Empire. “We took a little hit, we’re coming back strong.”
He continued, “Maybe when you do too much, you dilute yourself a little bit. We’re not going to do that anymore. We learned our lesson. Maybe two to three films a year and one or two shows, as opposed to doing four films and four shows.”
The most recent release calendar distributed by Disney has four films from Marvel Studios slated for 2025. These include Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, The Fantastic Four, and Blade, and four more Marvel movies slated for 2026, including the fifth Avengers movie.
Marvel is releasing a single film in 2024, Deadpool & Wolverine. Historically, the only time Marvel has released more than three movies in a year was in 2021, after the studio sat out 2020 due to the pandemic. The year after they released Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, the latter of which was a co-production with Sony Pictures.
On the TV side, Iger says that a portion of the upcoming series, a slate that includes the Kathryn Hahn-led WandaVision spinoff Agatha, set for release are “a vestige of basically a desire in the past to increase volume,” as reported by Variety.
This year, DC only has one live-action movie releasing which is Joker: Folie à Deux, a sequel to 2019’s Joker. And streaming service Max will also feature The Penguin live-action spinoff series set in the world of The Batman.
Not Helping the Cause
Unfortunately, many superhero movies over the last year have struggled to deliver at the box office. The Marvels, the follow-up to 2019’s Captain Marvel starring Brie Larson, had the franchise’s worst-ever opening weekend box office, with $47 million domestically.
Fans have pointed out “shoddy” special effects in Ant-Man: Quantumania and other Marvel features and series.
And then there's Jonathan Majors, the villain in the Loki series, and Quantumania, who is meant to be a huge part of future films but was found guilty of misdemeanor assault and harassment in a split verdict. Forbes reported that Marvel’s current plan is to keep Kang around as the villain of Avengers 5, which was previously called The Kang Dynasty.
Variety reported that Marvel‘s Thor: Love and Thunder was a box office hit with $760 million worldwide, but a lot of Marvel fans were turned off by writer-director Taika Waititi’s silly humor and the film’s “unappealing visual effects.”
The Thor actor himself, Chris Hemsworth, is aware of the negativity around his fourth Thor movie, and he even admitted in a new GQ magazine profile that Love and Thunder was “too silly” for its own good.
Some can point out that many of Marvel's movies and TV shows became confusing to fans once the multiverse got involved. One minute you're looking at one universe that you're familiar with and another moment you're engaging in unfamiliar territory. So, when you continue to add more, one can easily get lost in it all.
Sony’s Madame Web also made headlines for being a miss. According to Forbes, it has been described as “the worst Spider-Man film,” the “worst superhero film of all time,” and “one of the worst films ever made.”
If Marvel and DC get their superhero stuff together, 2025 might finally see an end to superhero fatigue. If they give fans the movies we want and expect, the ones Marvel and DC are good at making, people will watch as many as they can churn out.
