After years of unprecedented dominance, Marvel Studios is taking a hard look at itself and recalibrating for the future. As per reports on The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, in an unusually candid chat with a group of journalists at Marvel’s Burbank headquarters, Kevin Feige, the man behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), opened up about the studio’s recent misfires, the road ahead, and why fans shouldn’t expect to see Miles Morales or an explosion of new content any time soon. From the scaling back of output to Robert Downey Jr.’s surprise return, Feige laid out a vision that embraces focus, restraint, and storytelling that doesn’t feel like homework.
Here’s a breakdown of everything you should know about Marvel’s future from the studio head himself.
Feige didn’t mince words when it came to Marvel’s post-Endgame era. The studio nearly tripled its content output, jumping from 50 hours of content over 12 years to more than 127 hours in just six. “That’s too much,” Feige admitted. The surge, driven in part by Disney’s streaming ambitions, diluted quality and overwhelmed audiences. “For the first time ever, quantity trumped quality,” he said. “We always said that wouldn’t happen to us.”
Feige believes this over-saturation, especially the blending of Disney+ shows with theatrical films, is what truly fatigued audiences, not superheroes themselves. “Look at Superman,” he said, referencing the James Gunn film’s strong box office. “It’s clearly not superhero fatigue.”
Going forward, Marvel is reducing its annual film output to a maximum of three theatrical releases, a pace it first reached in 2017. On the TV side, the slowdown is even more dramatic. In some years, audiences may see only one live-action series.
“The output will be much less,” Feige confirmed, while noting that some Marvel shows, like Ironheart and Wonder Man, sat on the shelf for over a year due to scheduling backlogs. “I don’t like when things sit on shelves,” he added. “It stinks.”
The new strategy also involves a clean break between the TV and film universes. “Allowing a TV show to be a TV show is what we’re returning to,” Feige said, confirming that even major MCU events like the ending of Thunderbolts* won’t ripple into Daredevil: Born Again.
Despite earning positive reviews, Thunderbolts* struggled at the box office, a fact Feige attributes to its cast of lesser-known characters introduced in earlier shows. “Some audiences were still feeling that notion of, ‘I guess I had to have seen these other shows to understand who this is.’” Though the film was designed to stand on its own, the perception lingered. “We still have to make sure the audience understands that,” he acknowledged.
The decision to pivot away from Kang as the Multiverse Saga’s central villain came well before actor Jonathan Majors’ legal issues. “We had started to realise that Kang wasn’t big enough, wasn’t Thanos,” Feige said. That led to the studio embracing Doctor Doom as the next primary antagonist, with none other than Robert Downey Jr. returning to play the iconic villain in Avengers: Doomsday.
Feige began discussing the bold idea with Downey even before Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania hit theatres. “It was a long plan… to take one of our greatest characters and utilise one of our greatest actors,” he said.
Though Feige reiterated Marvel’s commitment to diversity, highlighting Iman Vellani as Ms Marvel as “one of the greatest bits of casting we’ve ever done”—not all fan-favourite characters have a clear future. He confirmed that a live-action Miles Morales film is not in development. “That is nowhere,” Feige said. Marvel has been asked by Sony to stay away until the Spider-Verse trilogy concludes.
Marvel’s upcoming Fantastic Four: First Steps marks a deliberate return to self-contained, character-centric storytelling, a model that doesn’t require audiences to consume hours of prior content. “It is a no-homework-required movie,” Feige emphasised. Set in a retro-futuristic world with a 1960s aesthetic, the film introduces Marvel’s First Family in an isolated reality where they are the only heroes. “We didn’t want to have the Eternals issue of, ‘Where were they during Thanos?’” Feige explained.
Looking ahead, Marvel plans to lean into genre experimentation again, just like it did with Shang-Chi. “We were talking about a structure of an upcoming post-Secret Wars movie… It’s about what genre haven’t we done and how can we do it?”
One of the biggest course corrections comes in the form of finances. Feige revealed that Marvel has significantly reduced budgets, with recent films costing “upwards of a third cheaper” than those produced two years ago. Marvel even met with the team behind Gareth Edwards’ The Creator, made on just $80 million, to learn cost-saving strategies. “Everybody’s in that state of mind,” Feige said. “At least at Disney.”
While James Gunn has insisted that DC projects begin only with a completed script, Feige defended Marvel’s iterative approach. “We’ve never started a movie without a full script,” he said, before adding, “but I’ve never been satisfied with a script that we’ve had.” Marvel’s hallmark “plussing,” constant tweaks throughout production, remains central to its process. “If [actors] have an idea, you want to adjust to it and improve it. I wouldn’t want to change that.”
Future Avengers films like Doomsday and Secret Wars will be shot at London’s Pinewood Studios, not Georgia, where many earlier MCU entries were made. The decision, Feige said, was due to space and scheduling, not just tax breaks. “We had the opportunity to lock up Pinewood… that’s why many of our movies will be there.”
Still, he expressed optimism about returning to U.S. production hubs like New York and Georgia, citing their competitive film incentives.
Feige’s own future and what he’s watching
As for his tenure at Marvel? Feige has “a little less than two years” left on his current contract. He’s open to staying but also hinted at broader ambitions. “Do I want to be making big movies for big audiences in 10 or 15 years from now? Yes, absolutely,” he said. “Marvel’s a great way to do that for me right now.”
And when he’s not overseeing the MCU, Feige is diving into classic cinema. His nightly film routine includes 1930s and ’40s gems like The Big Clock and Dodge City. “Everything old is new again,” he mused. “That’s another reason I watch those old movies.”
From budget cuts and character resets to genre reinvention and creative freedom, Marvel is clearly entering a new era. Whether audiences follow it into that future remains to be seen, but if Feige has his way, it’ll be on more focused, less crowded terms.