Kevin Feige, pioneering president of Marvel Studios and the visionary behind the billion-dollar Marvel Cinematic Universe, recently stated on “The Movie Business Podcast” that the cultural phenomenon of superhero movies will not slow down anytime soon.
“There’s 80 years of the most interesting, emotional, groundbreaking stories that have been told in Marvel comics, and it is our great privilege to be able to take what we have and adapt them,” Feige said.
But how long will audiences be willing to go to theaters to see a seemingly infinite string of films with no end in sight? Not much longer, if the numbers add up. The three most recent Marvel films have all grossed more in the opening weekend than the first three films released to the MCU, but none have reached the heights of Avengers: Endgame, which made $357,115,007 on opening weekend alone and almost $3 billion worldwide.
Spider-Man: Far From Home, which released directly following Endgame, saw a 117% drop in opening weekend sales, and 2021’s Eternals was met with a 133% decline. While more recent movies have not continued in this downward trend, I believe the initial drop is indicative of a cultural fatigue from the factory line of content Disney’s Marvel has been producing over the past several years.
The core of Feige’s belief in the continuation of his cinematic universe is the ample stories present in Marvel Comics’ back catalog. However, this neglects the very thing that made the Marvel Cinematic Universe a hit for moviegoers in the first place: its accessibility. Weekend moviegoers could go see the first Iron Man film in 2009 with no knowledge of Tony Stark as a Marvel Comics character and walk out of the theater with an interest in the next movie, but this “walk in, walk out” mentality has not existed in the sequel-driven industry of Marvel Studios for a long time.
With the implementation of Disney+ original Marvel shows, the idea of the MCU belonging to casual audiences rather than devotees has gone entirely out the window. Requiring viewers to watch dozens of hours of television on a paid subscription service in order to understand plot points in new movies is utterly contradictory to their initial goal of bringing casual viewers unwilling or unable to read hundreds of issues of comic books into Marvel movie showings. This considerable increase in properties per year has placed a very hefty price tag on interested viewers. The studio has six upcoming films and several television shows coming in 2023 and 2024 alone; it took them four years to create the first six films in the franchise.
When it comes to his belief that audiences will not suffer from “superhero fatigue,” Feige is only half wrong. Recent hits such as Amazon Prime’s The Boys and Invincible show an acceptance of contained indie publication adaptations, more accessible for non-comic reading audiences than the bloated Marvel Cinematic Universe.
However, I don’t think Feige’s opinion that audiences will never tire of comic adaptations extends to his own corporation. I predict Marvel’s 2023-2024 influx of increasingly obscure and disconnected films and television shows will not prove to be a refresher to a stale universe, but rather another disconnect to an already alienated casual audience - and may just land the final blow on Marvel Studios’ near-dead cash cow.
Kevin Fiege, President of Marvel Studios
