Kevin Feige, the longtime President of Marvel Studios, is seen by many as the most successful studio executive in the 21st Century. The 33 films that Marvel Studios has produced have generated a box office of more than $31 billion. In particular, throughout the 2010’s almost every Marvel movie was a financial blockbuster, culminating with the 2019 release of AVENGERS: ENDGAME, whose worldwide box office topped $2.7 billion.
However, Marvel’s record of success since ENDGAME has been significantly less consistent, a reality that Feige acknowledges. He sat for a wide-ranging interview this week in the service of promoting the latest Marvel offering, THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS.
Feige covered Marvel’s strategy during the period when Disney+ was launched, which included creating a large number of streaming series for the platform. A measure of this strategy shift is the fact that Marvel released 50 hours of streaming programs in total from 2008-2019, but since then has released 127 hours of streaming programs.
Feige sees now that it was “too much,” and has recently decided to reel in the number of series featuring Marvel characters. The interview also touched on topics such as how long he plans to run Marvel, the status of the troubled BLADE production, and whether the studio will produce more R-rated films such as last year’s wildly successful DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE.
