By accident or design, Disney honcho-in-chief Bob Iger managed to miss pretty much all of the (frequently embattled and pandemic-afflicted) Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The initial announcement of his departure from his position as Disney’s CEO came shortly after the massive box office victory lap that was Avengers: Endgame, and his sudden, shocking return to the job, in November of 2022, arriving right on the heels of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Which has had the odd effect of making Iger responsible for a whole slate of Marvel programming that he didn’t have a lot to do with green-lighting—including the recent Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, which underperformed both with critics and at the box office. (Although still in theaters, the film currently sits at No. 25 in the rankings of domestic MCU performers, just below Thor: The Dark World.)
Not that any of that is stopping Iger from his usual sunny outlook on the company’s fortunes: Dismissing the idea of Marvel fatigue, Iger recently told attendees at a conference that “There’s nothing in any way inherently off in terms of the Marvel brand.” Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference—your one-stop shop for all the hottest news in both Morgans and Stanleys—Iger said the MCU just needs to “look at what characters and stories we’re mining.”
While stating that “sequels typically work well for us,” Iger acknowledged that it needs to be more selective about how many to dole out, suggesting that maybe Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man didn’t necessarily need a whole third movie. “You look at the trajectory of Marvel over the next five years,” Iger promised, and “You’ll see a lot of newness. We’re going to turn back to the Avengers franchise, but with a whole different set of Avengers.”
