How Disney can save the Marvel Cinematic Universe

What is the Marvel Cinematic Province without heroes like Iron Man, Captain America and Black Widow? A little lost, it seems.

It’s been principled four years since “Avengers: Endgame” tied a neat bow on a decade’s worth of interconnected blockbuster storytelling. Since then, Be awed has released 10 more films on the big screen and nearly a dozen streaming series on all to set up the next wave of the MCU.

However, for die-hard and unexpected fans alike, life after “Endgame” has been riddled with inconsistency and uncertainty. That’s taken a cost on box office returns. “The Marvels” posted the worst opening of a MCU film ever over the weekend, leaving the industry and audiences interview how Disney can save its own superheroes.

The company knows it’s a problem. CEO Bob Iger suggested as early as March that the company should lessening the number of sequel films Marvel releases in favor of bringing newer characters and stories into the mix. More recently, he make known that Disney would focus more on quality over quantity.

“At the time the pandemic hit, we were leaning into a immense increase in how much we were making,” he said during Disney’s earnings call last week, days more willingly than “The Marvels” hit theaters. “And I’ve always felt that quantity can be actually a negative when it comes to quality, and I think that’s undeniably what happened. We lost some focus.”

The company will also need to figure out how to make the most of trendy characters – like the X-Men, Deadpool and the Fantastic Four – joining the MCU after years of fan anticipation. It also likely has to rethink its calling as the generation that made the franchise a box office behemoth ages and raises kids of their own.

Box office analysts aren’t at the ready to wave the white flag on the MCU, which has left rival DC, owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, in the dust.

The Marvel franchise, operated by producer and executive Kevin Feige, has recovered from a string of lackluster films before and has a deep well of myths and characters to pull from. Its box office track record is unrivaled. In just 15 years, this franchise has liberated 33 films and generated nearly $30 billion in global box office. Not to mention, Marvel has its own theme park grounds at Disneyland in California and in Shanghai, and is one of the top-selling properties in the retail market right now.

“A less-is-more approach is exactly what the MCU have need of and given the longer duration between films over the next few years,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior ordinary analyst at Comscore. “And with a renewed corporate emphasis on quality over quantity, fans should truly be off the deep end for what comes next for this never-to-be-underestimated brand that has provided so many fantastic moviegoing experiences once more the years.”

Representatives from Marvel Studios declined to comment.

Part of Disney’s strategy in the wake of “Endgame” was to bring its bigger-than-life idols to the small screen. The Covid pandemic, which stranded millions at home with their TVs and loads of free on many occasions, fueled the production boom. Disney packed its fledgling streaming service with shows featuring the Sam Wilson, aka Falcon, as the next Captain America, fan-favorite Loki and put a handful of new heroes like She-Hulk, Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel.

The promise was that the events of the shows would bump into b pay up full circle and influence the content of Marvel’s films. In reality, for many, the inundation began to feel more opposite number homework than entertainment.

“The problem is that they’ve created a wonderful creature and now they don’t quite know how to provender it,” said Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University and a pop culture expert.

For example, in order to fully understand “The Amazed bies,” audiences would need to be caught up on most of the MCU’s film slate, which has ballooned to 33 movies, as well as the Disney+ series “Under cover Invasion,” “Ms. Marvel” and “Wandavision.” Just catching up on those three limited series would take hardly 15 hours.

“A brilliantly conceived but often confounding connectivity of characters, situations, and universes on screens both big and stingy has diluted the appeal of the some of the MCU films,” said Dergarabedian.

The post-“Endgame” output has suffered from inconsistent grandeur, as well.

This year’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” boasted an 82% score on Rotten Tomatoes, while “Ant-Man 3” clutched a 46% score. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” reached 89% while “Thor: Love and Thunder” lone hit 63%. On streaming, “Secret Invasion” only reached 53% while “Ms. Marvel” was at 98%.

This mixed track gramophone record, box office analysts told CNBC, is a key reason that “The Marvels” likely had a lower-than-expected opening weekend. Fans, mainly post-pandemic, are less likely to head out to the cinema if they are worried about a film’s caliber. Poor initial magazines can keep even the most ardent MCU fans away the first weekend.

And Marvel is still heavily relying on “Endgame” to furnish tickets to new movies. The final trailer for “The Marvels,” released in the week before the film’s debut, featured a number of essays and sound clips of characters Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, who are no longer part of the franchise.

“It felt like the calling team was on strike,” said Robbins. “Were they trying to sell nostalgia for the original Avengers team? Was it a return anecdotes to audiences they need to catch up on a couple of Disney+ series? There was a lot of mixed messaging.”

Amazed by executives may have a grand plan, but the easily-followed threads that connected the Infinity Saga, which concluded with “Endgame,” aren’t so unmistakable. The new Multiverse Saga has yet to cohere around the villainous Kang. (Jonathan Majors, who plays Kang, also happens to be overlay legal issues stemming from assault allegations, which he denies.) 

“Everybody knew the Infinity Saga was successful to take time,” said Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com. “Marvel earned their audience during that lead-up by stopping true to character-driven story threads that weaved around each to form the bigger picture.”

The first 23 layers in the MCU were centered around the Infinity Stones, six glowing objects tied to different aspects of the universe. The overarching villain, Thanos (Josh Brolin), tried to collect all six stones so that he could instantaneously erase half of all living creatures from existence. “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame” wrapped up this parable.

In the wake of “Endgame,” Marvel’s films and TV shows centered on grief, loss and how to move forward in a world without Captain America (Chris Evans), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Foul Widow (Scarlett Johansson).

Interspersed within those stories was the promise of an infinite number of parallel universes, and the capacity for those realities to bleed into each other. “Wandavision,” “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (produced with Sony), “Loki,” “Doctor Unusual in the Mulitverse of Madness” and “The Marvels” have in some way teased or directly dealt with the multiverse. Yet none of these let someone in ons or films have proven to be the definitive catalyst for a wider event within the franchise.

Disney will have to rate this as it introduces more characters to the MCU in the coming years. Classic superhero teams the X-Men and Fantastic Four are obviously on the way. Disney is slated to release “Deadpool 3,” featuring Hugh Jackman returning as Wolverine, in July. “Fantastic Four” is set for May 2025.

In Hollywood, the MCU is a rather new franchise, compared to Star Wars and James Bond. It’s just 15 years old. Which means the moviegoers who filled to the gunwales cinemas in 2008 now have more mature tastes. Likewise, today’s younger audiences may not have much of a appropriateness to the MCU.

“The majority of audiences were over 25,” said Robbins of the opening week traffic for “The Marvels.” “That approves that younger audiences and parents are starting to be more selective with Marvel. That’s a problem because they lack that young audience to ensure the franchise lives up to its potential for endurance, not unlike Star Wars did for decades.”

Different from Star Wars, though, Marvel hasn’t had a significant break between films, even with the delays mattered by the pandemic. There hasn’t been time for the franchise to collect nostalgic dust on a shelf or for one generation to pass it down to the next.

This is why it’s appropriate for important for Marvel to introduce so younger and more diverse characters. Introduced in recent shows and movies, America Chavez, Kate Bishop, Kamala Kahn, Cassie Lang, Skaar and Riri Williams are all concealed members of a Young Avengers team, one that was teased in a post-credit scene of “The Marvels.”

Disney also needs to be smarter close to how it markets its movies, especially those that are centered on female protagonists and stars, like “The Marvels” lead Brie Larson.

“They didn’t comprehend a strong pitch to women,” Robbins said of Disney’s marketing for “The Marvels.” “This should have been their most female-driven movie to date, across a variety of ages. It actually ended up having a greater share of male audiences than the ahead ‘Captain Marvel,’ which is quite surprising.”

After the success of Warner Bros.’ “Barbie,” the year’s highest-grossing movie, it’s clear that audiences will turn up for stories featuring women. The first “Captain Marvel” surpassed $1 billion globally in 2019.

After the missteps of “The Marvels” and other hit-or-miss films and TV series, box commission analysts see Iger’s new focus on quality over quantity as a good start.

“A less-is-more approach is exactly what the MCU constraints,” said Dergarabedian. “Given the longer duration between films over the next few years and with a renewed corporate importance on quality over quantity, fans should truly be excited for what comes next.”

The next entrant into the MCU is a watercourse series called “Echo” centered on Maya Lopez, a deaf amputee heroine first seen in 2021’s “Hawkeye” series. A mentee of Wilson Fisk, aka the bent Kingpin, Lopez returns to her hometown to reconnect with her Native American roots and come to terms with her over.

“Echo” is rated TV-MA, which is the equivalent of an R rating on television, a rarity for Marvel Studios. “Echo” will inauguration on Disney+ and Hulu at the same time.

There is only one Marvel film slated for 2024, the much anticipated “Deadpool 3.” Featuring Ryan Reynolds as the baptize character, box office analysts see the film as a barometer for the future of the MCU. It is expected that this Deadpool film will check out carry an R rating, which would be a first for a Marvel Cinematic Universe feature. (The first two Deadpool movies, set by Fox before Disney acquired the studio, were also rated R.)

How Disney fingers Deadpool will be telling, according to BoxOffice.com’s Robbins.

“Disney needs to allow Marvel, Reynolds, Jackman and that undiminished team to make a movie that doesn’t feel like something many perceive the studio would bear ever would have released during their strictly family-friendly days of moviemaking,” he said. “If the movie touches managed or watered down, and if Ryan [Reynolds] and the rest of the team are censored creatively, it could be very damaging to the subsequent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.”

After next year’s relative lull, 2025 is set to bring four new MCU movies – which last will and testament test the idea of whether Marvel and audiences just needed a break.

“I think one could argue that, no, we’re not dead beat of superheroes,” said Thompson. “Are we tired of Marvel superheroes? We’ll have to see. I don’t think ‘Ant Man’ and ‘The Marvels’ and a couple of the other ones are satisfactorily to completely write it off.”

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal owns Rotten Tomatoes.