Disney CEO Bob Iger Says Company Being “Very Careful” With Future ‘Star Wars’ Movies & There’s Nothing “Inherently Off” With Marvel As A Brand

Bob Iger returned as CEO of Disney last November, and since his return, the company’s mantra has been “stick with what works.” Last month, Iger put that into practice when he announced sequels to the “Toy Story,” “Frozen,” and “Zootopia‘ franchises. But what isn’t working at Disney recently? THR reports that Iger doesn’t like how expensive making films and shows has gotten, with Deadline adding that franchises like “Star Wars” and Marvel may see some shifts because of that.

READ MORE: ‘Star Wars’: Kevin Feige & Patty Jenkins Movies Shelved as Taika Waititi & Damon Lindelof Movies Move Into Frontrunner Position

Iger made comments about the future of Disney’s big brands at a Morgan Stanley conference, where he was asked an open-ended question about the health of Lucasfilm, the MCU, and Pixar overall. “I think a lot of all of them — they’re all my babies, in a way,” Iger responded, then he focused on Marvel for a bit. “There are 7,000 characters, there are a lot more stories to tell. What we have to look at at Marvel is not necessarily the volume of Marvel stories we’re telling, but how many times we go back to the well on certain characters. Sequels typically work well for us. Do you need a third and a fourth, for instance, or is it time to turn to other characters?”

The exec’s comments surely allude to the tepid response to “Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania,” which made over $600 million worldwide, but had the steepest second-weekend drop of any Marvel movie ever at 69%. Critics also didn’t care for the film. But Iger’s comments also reference wanting to give the sheer variety of Marvel characters its due. “There’s nothing in any way inherently off in terms of the Marvel brand,” Iger continued. “I think we just have to look at what characters and stories we’re mining. If you look at the trajectory of Marvel in the next five years, there will be a lot of newness. We’re going to turn back to the Avengers franchise with a whole new set of Avengers, for example.” So, when it comes to the MCU formula, maybe expect less sequels and more new faces.

As for “Star Wars,” Iger said that Disney is being “careful” about that franchise’s future as far as film are concerned. “”Star Wars”, we made three what we called saga films, which is obviously the successors to George Lucas’s first six,” Iger said. “They did very well at the box office, tremendously well as a matter of fact. We’ve made two so-called standalones 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.”

Iger’s comments shouldn’t come as a surprise, as earlier this week Lucasfilm made it known that both Patty Jenkins and Kevin Feige‘s “Star Wars” film projects are shelved, with Taika Waititi‘s and Damon Lindelof‘s still on the way (but not any time soon). But Iger did praise the “Star Wars” shows on Disney+, like “The Mandalorian” and “Andor,” calling them “extremely successful.” So expect future “Star Wars” films to be well-considered properties, and ones also up to the high quality of “Andor” and its ilk.

Quality and thrift, rather than a glut of spending and sheer volume of releases, will be Disney’s modus operandi from here on out, according to Iger. “I’m really pleased that the support that I’m getting from the content creators of the company is significant and real,” Iger said, “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,. But Iger also added that it’s 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 with how many MCU projects are out there, and how generally expensive they are, expect Marvel movies to see the effects of Iger’s new initiative fairly soon. It’s nice to see some self-awareness on Iger’s part when it comes to the sheer surfeit of Marvel and “Star Wars” content. Maybe reining it in a tad for less expensive, higher-quality productions will have positive ramifications for the industry at large.