Geeky couch potatoes are spoilt for choice these days. In the 1980s, we were lucky if Star Wars came on the telly once a year, while superhero movies arrived in multiplexes at a pace of about three a decade. These days, the average fan boy or girl is like Jabba the Hutt, slavering with gruesome delight as we devour content from streaming sites, cinema screens and social media. There is so much out there that missing the odd show or even movie isn’t quite the travesty it might once have been – I still haven’t caught all episodes of the Willow TV series despite the original film being one of my childhood favourites. There will be more content along soon, and Disney+ seems to retain most of it in perpetuity, so what’s the rush?
A recent piece in the Hollywood Reporter, however, suggests this might not always be so. It touches on comments from Disney boss Bob Iger suggesting that the studio needs to get “better at curating” franchise content such as Star Wars and Marvel because of the extraordinary expense of creating it. Could the era of three Marvel movies a year, space opera spin-offs galore and endless interlinked superhero shows be coming to an end? It seems unlikely, especially given the excellent opening box office for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and the impending debut of The Mandalorian season three in a week’s time. But is there an argument that Disney would be better off making less and focusing more on its big hitters?
