Speaking at a conference this week, Disney CEO Bob Iger seemingly prepares the way for some big Marvel delays plus teases the future of Star Wars movies. Iger spoke at the Morgan Stanley Conference as covered by THR. In this speech he discussed reducing costs by reducing the volume of projects. However the importance of making sure the projects when they do release are of higher quality.

Now, whilst Iger never directly says, there are big delays coming to Marvel, you probably have heard, or read the rumors. If you want to know more about the Barside Buzz, check out the related link below. However what I can say is that there are simply too many good sources saying delays are about to hit Marvel for them all to be wrong. Therefore, on the back of what Iger had to say this week, I feel like he’s preparing the way for a new slate to be revealed. Rumor is that new slate will delay a lot of projects across the next few years.

Less Is More

“I’m really pleased that the support that I’m getting from the content creators of the company is significant and real, and it comes in the form of reducing the expense per content, whether it’s a TV series or a film, where costs have just skyrocketed in a huge way and not a supportable way in my opinion. They all agree to that,” Iger said, adding that it was also about “understanding how much volume we need, reducing how much we make. So it’s how much we spend on what we make and how much we make.”

“And as we look to reduce the content that we’re creating for our own platforms, there probably are opportunities to license to third parties,” Iger said. “For a while that was verboten or something we couldn’t possibly do, because we were so favoring our own streaming platforms. But if we get to a point where we need less content for those platforms, and we still have the capability of producing that content, why not use it to grow revenue? And that’s what we would likely do.”

By the way he did point out that Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel would all remain Disney exclusives.

Too Many Marvel Sequels?

Now, on this point, I’m not sure I agree with Iger. The CEO indicates that adding third or fourth sequels for Marvel characters should be less important than bringing in new characters.

“What we have to look at at Marvel is not necessarily the volume of Marvel storytelling, but how many times we go back to the well on certain characters,” Iger said. “Sequels typically work well for us, but do you need a third or a fourth, for instance? Or is it time to turn to other characters? There’s nothing in any way inherently off in terms of the Marvel brand. I think we just have to look at what characters and stories we are mining.”

If Disney released two films on the same day, one being Blade and one being an Old Man Cap movie with the return of Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, which one makes more money opening weekend? I’m not saying Blade wouldn’t be the better movie, that’s subjective and hypothetical. However I’m sure fans would be more excited about the Old Man Cap movie. Why, because they already love Evans as Cap.

“And if you look at the trajectory of Marvel over the next five years, you’ll see a lot of newness,” he added. “Now, we’re going to turn back to the Avengers franchise, but with a whole set of different Avengers, as an example.”

RELATED: Massive Delays Rumored For MCU – Secret Wars To Slip Till 2028? | Barside Buzz

However for me, and many other Marvel fans, Phase 4 has suffered by just constantly introducing new characters that don’t seem in any connected to one another. You simply don’t feel like there’s an Avengers team ready to be made. I mean who will be in it? We’ve had a ton of new characters introduced and have any of them become nearly as popular as the OG Avengers?

I’ll take a proper Hulk movie over Eternals, or Echo any day. Either way, some big Marvel delays are coming folks, so watch this space. Bob Iger only adds fuel to the fire with these comments, which is I think his intention.

Star Wars Movies?

Finally, lets talk Star Wars movies. Since the disaster that was the ST, and the flop that was Solo, Star Wars has become a TV franchise only. That makes no financial sense whatsoever. Therefore desire to produce movies is there for Disney. Problem is, every time Lucasfilm presses the go button on someones idea, it never seems to actually go under cameras. Just this week we heard that both Rogue Squadron and Kevin Feige’s Star Wars movie have been shelved. Then we have Rian Johnson’s trilogy that may or may not ever happen. We also have Game of Thrones showrunners Benioff and Weiss who were given a trilogy to make and then that didn’t happen. Plus Rogue Squadron was officially announced with a director and that movies has now seemingly been dropped like a hot potato.

So what did Iger have to say on the movie front?

“Star Wars, we made three what we called saga films, which is obviously the successors to George Lucas’ first six. They did very well at the box office — tremendously well as a matter of fact. We’ve made two so-called stand-alones in Rogue One and Solo. Rogue One did quite well, Solo was a little disappointing to us. It gave us pause just to think maybe the cadence was a little too aggressive. And so we decided to pull back a bit. We still are developing Star Wars films. We’re going to make sure that when we make one, that it’s the right one, so we are being very careful there.”

RELATED: Rogue Squadron And Feige’s Star Wars Movie Reportedly Shelved

Sure, the ST did make decent box office. Until that is we got to The Rise of Skywalker which was the first final part of a Star Wars trilogy to make the less money than the middle one. Not only was that a disappointment to Disney, but the damage that movie did to the Star Wars brand cannot be underestimated. Disney actually presided over the destruction of the whole Skywalker Saga. By returning Palpatine, with one swift stroke Disney made Anakin’s turn back to good and sacrifice meaningless.

That’s why the Star Wars movie are in this position. In my opinion Solo was all wrong as well and didn’t get the character of Han Solo at all. However I’m also still sure that the extreme polarization of the fanbase after The Last Jedi played a part in that movies flop status also.

At least now it seems like Lucasfim may stop announcing projects until they are sure they are happening. That certainly appears to be the case for the Damon Lindelof produced movies that’s supposedly casting and prepping to shoot for a 2025 release. None of that is official from Disney yet though and that’s a smarter approach for me. Only announce projects that have a production start date. Let the Barside Buzz deal with the rest to hype your upcoming movies.

Currently that Buzz says we should hear more about the next Star Wars movies at Star Wars Celebration this year, so keep an eye on that. Do you agree this is Bob Iger as he prepares the way for Marvel Delays? Leave us your thoughts on Iger’s comments below as always.

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