Disney CEO Bob Iger sees Thunderbolts* as the “first and best example” of Marvel‘s new focus on its feature slate yielding strong returns.
During a conference call with Wall Street analysts to discuss the company’s better-than-expected results in the fiscal second quarter, Iger put the No. 1 box office attraction into strategic context. Since returning as Disney CEO late in 2022, Iger has overseen a streamlining and refocusing of Marvel, with not as many sequels focused on lower-tier characters and far fewer series for Disney+.
“In our zeal to flood our streaming platform with more content, we turned to all of our creative engines, including Marvel, and had them produce a lot more,” Iger said, echoing his previous comments since returning as Disney CEO in 2022. “We’ve also learned over time that quantity does not necessarily beget quality. Frankly, we’ve all admitted to ourselves that we lost a little focus by making too much. By consolidating a bit and having Marvel focus much more on their films, we believe it will result in better quality. I think the first and best example of that is Thunderbolts*.”
The film brought in a solid, if not spectacular, $74 million at the domestic box office last weekend. Reviews and word of mouth were notably more positive than the past few Marvel outings. After the opening weekend, Disney revealed that the asterix in the film’s title stands for the subtitle “The New Avengers,” with the characters in Thunderbolts due to appear in the next Avengers film in May 2026.
Asked on the call about the company’s upcoming film slate, Iger called it “the best I have seen” since 2019. In that last full year of pre-Covid business, Disney paced the industry with a handful of billion-dollar grossers, including Avengers: Endgame.
A pullback on original series for Disney+ has also affected Lucasfilm and Pixar, as well as the company’s in-house animation and live-action studio. The previous burst of new production, which was primarily aimed at goosing subscriber numbers for Disney+, was overseen by former Disney CEO Bob Chapek, who took the baton from Iger in February 2020.
Iger reportedly expressed concern about Chapek opening the floodgates in 2021 and 2022 during the period when he was executive chairman and then, in most of 2022, no longer affiliated with Disney.
When he returned as CEO in November 2022 following Chapek’s ouster, Iger was vocal about the drift of Marvel. “Do you need a third and a fourth, for instance, or is it time to turn to other characters?” he mused at a March 2023 conference hosted by Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley.
