If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Even Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige will admit there's been too much MCU movies & TV shows since Avengers: Endgame

The decision to try to put out too many shows too quickly has caused a distinct dip in quality at Marvel Studios, something even Kevin Feige has acknowledged in recent months.

Avengers: Endgame still with Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark
Image credit: Marvel Studios

When is it too much of a good thing? In the case of the MCU, some point after Avengers: Endgame. The biggest critique of the ever-expanding media franchise became how fans felt like they had to watch all the movies and TV series to have any hope of keeping up with what was happening on the screen. Turns out, even Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel Studios, thinks the studio went overboard pumping out content in the years after Endgame, which caused a serious dip in quality.

During a long interview with the press timed with the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Kevin Feige, who has been the architect behind the MCU since its inception, admitted that they’d put out too much, too quickly. “We produced 50 hours of stories between 2007 and 2019,” he explained. That period takes the MCU from Robert Downey Jr.’s first appearance as Iron Man up through Avengers: Endgame and the end of the Infinity Saga. However, in the six years since, they’ve “had well over 100 hours of stories – in half the time. That’s too much.”

Why did the studio produce so many movies and series? Part of it was because they wanted to take their success and experiment with it by making different kinds of movies like Eternals. However, part of it was also trying to expand into their new streaming space. “What we also ended up focusing on because of Disney+ was expansion – and it’s that expansion that I think led people to say, ‘It used to be fun, but now do I have to know everything about all of these?’”

That need to expand also caused a lack of quality control at Marvel Studios. “For the first time ever, quantity trumped quality,” Feige said. “We spent 12 years working on the Infinity Saga saying that’s never going to happen to us. We always had more characters than we could possibly make because we weren’t going to make a movie a month. Suddenly, there’s a mandate to make more. And we go, ‘Well, we have to do more.’”

That mandate likely came from Disney, which had spent a lot of money setting up Disney+ as a streaming service and was keen to populate it with exclusives from its Marvel brand to entice subscribers. However, in hindsight, it seems that did more harm than good to the company. Now, the focus is, once again, on quality, even if it means Marvel makes fewer shows in the future.


Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

Trent Cannon

Trent Cannon: Trent is a freelance writer who has been covering anime, video games, and pop culture for a decade. (He/Him)

Comments

Want to join the discussion? Please activate your account first.
Visit Reedpop ID if you need to resend the confirmation email.

View Comments (0)

Find out how we conduct our review by reading our review policy