Over the next few years, we’re going to be seeing plenty of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. On the movie front, we’ve got Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, Captain America 3, Thor 3 and A.N. Other (probably Doctor Strange) hitting the big screen, while Marvel’s current TV plans include Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter and the Netflix series Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and The Defenders.
While that’s certainly a packed slate, the studio still has ambitions on numerous other properties, with the likes of Black Panther, Inhumans, Ms. Marvel and Runaways, solo outings for Black Widow and The Hulk and a sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy all previously tipped as possibilities, not to mention the fact that Marvel Studios has reacquired the rights to The Punisher and Ghost Rider. So, how could Marvel possibly hope to manage all these projects? Well, according to Kevin Feige, it may necessitate altering the studio’s release pattern, upping their output to three or even four movies per year.
“I think television is filling some of that now, in terms of bringing out more product,” Feige tells Badass Digest. “That’s certainly the idea with the Netflix shows. But I don’t know that we will necessarily say ‘Okay, we’re now moving strategically to three a year, now we’re moving to four a year.’ What I think is more likely – if [knocks on wood-like table] the next group of movies work and people want to see additional stories – we’ll have too many franchises and you can’t do one of each franchise every two or three years. We’d have to move to three a year, but that would have to be a natural move if it were to occur. We’d have a [script] draft, we’d have a filmmaker, we’d have a character the audience wants to see – let’s slot in a place for a third one. Or a fourth one. But it’s hard enough to deliver two quality, hopefully bar-raising movies a year.”
Would three or four Marvel movies per year be overkill, or is it the next logical step for the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Let us know your thoughts…
Originally published March 18, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
