Is Superhero Fatigue Real? It's complicated.

If Werewolf By Night came out in theatres I would have gone to see it multiple times. The length was not a problem, the effects were not a problem, it was just really good. Give us good writing and good character development.

Genre fatigue isn’t real, quality fatigue is. Marvel’s projects being very similar and falling off a bit in quality recently are the culprits. People don’t just want to watch the same thing. I also wager that the connectivity of the MCU is bound to eventually be a turn-off to some who haven’t been avidly following it for a decade

It’s not comic movie fatigue. It’s MEDIOCRE comic movie fatigue. We just had Guardians Vol 3 and Across the Spider-Verse and both were stellar.

The fact that so many of my friends have never even heard of Werewolf by Night, which I find to be one of the best marvel products, and that there’s currently no plan to ever bring the characters back is so so sad to me

I think where a lot of the "Marvel Fatigue" narratives come from the fact that prior to Endgame, every movie they released was essential to watch for the ongoing story; and the movies post-Endgame don't feel that way because of the undefined plans and disjointed releases. I think people see that revenue has decrease from the $1 Billion per movie they were doing for a year or so, and equate the relative drop in revenue to fatigue, rather than that people don't view every film as essential like the couple years from the run up to and run off from Infinity War & Endgame.

I actually see Iger’s perspective on this. Yes, GOTG 3 did really well and Quantumania eked out a profit. But the return on investment just isn’t there like it was four years ago. Quantumania, Love and Thunder, MoM, etc. aren’t going to get people back in the theater the same way Avengers movies and OG hero stand-alones did. We’re now at a point where audiences are becoming massively selective about what they see in theaters due to both a lack of enthusiasm and general market forces like inflation and cost of living. Every single Marvel movie is no longer a must-see on the big screen. Spacing out these releases, giving your teams more time to polish the products, and creating a more cohesive vision is a smart choice.

I'm of the camp who believes Marvel was better when there was a lot less Marvel. I feel like less movies means more time to make good movies.

You have to love how Disney begged audiences to stop treating every entry of the MCU as "might-see" content when they didn't bother spacing out their releases and as such; they had episodes of Ms Marvel airing the same weeks as Thor 4's premiere.

Nando, I dont think you quite get how much these movies really need to make to turn a profit. Other than Guardians 3, all other Disney movies this year have had a budget of 200-300 million and none of them have grossed more than 550 million. Its the production cost 200+ million plus the marketing (usually 100m) and half of the gross goes to theaters. These movies would need at least 600 million to break even, which in the past, was no problem for Disney. So no, things are not fine, obviously they're not terrible because the whole industry is suffering from mediocre blockbuster fatigue, but this has been a very bad year for Disney.

I’m glad Disney is doing this. Don’t get me wrong, I love Marvel, but if we get 2 less movies a year in exchange for the other 1-2 to be higher quality and more unique, I’d rake that deal in a heartbeat. Hell, even doing it just to get film twitter to stop complaining about the MCU seems worth it.

I appreciate the effort made to put the spreadsheet together to help with the points you're making. If I could make a suggestion, though, I'd urge you to consider adding the marketing costs in addition to the budgets released by the studios. Estimates for marketing for these blockbusters are ~$100M, so a rather significant amount. In addition, the studio only gets a % of the revenue after splitting with the theaters. It varies by studio and country but in general 50%ish of domestic revenues, 40%ish of international revenue, and 25%ish from China. With the way that movie costs have ballooned, many movies have to make almost a billion dollars gross in order to be profitable from just the theatrical release. They absolutely have to rely on the tie-ins and toys, which as you've pointed out, they're not maximizing. Having said all that, I agree with your overall point that it's not a matter of superhero fatigue. I think that's a lazy and simple way to justify their decisions and reduce what is a complex situation into a soundbite (with the added bonus that it subtly hints that it's the audience at fault). Studios need to be more fiscally responsible, ensure quality writing and execution, have additional and more creative ways to profit on the backend, and maybe go back to the drawing board regarding the streaming model. There's quite a few movies that I decided to skip in theaters because I the reviews weren't great and I knew I could see them at home in a relatively short time if I still felt like giving it a chance despite reviews.

I don’t have superhero fatigue. I’m more into superheroes than ever. I just have a lot better sense of which characters I care about and don’t, now that I read comics on a daily basis. So it’s harder for me to care about watching things like Secret Invasion as soon as the episodes drop bc I know there aren’t any characters in it that I particularly care about. My friends are all into superheroes, so we go to the movies on opening night still as a social thing. But it’s getting hard with the tv shows.

The fact that the toys for Ant-Man just came out (with no modok) and Lego didn't make anything for the movie is insane

I feel like we don’t have superhero fatigue, but we have is marvel having a synergy problem. Everybody’s kind of just waiting for them to get to the point we want to understand how all these movies are relevant to each other DC on the other hand has a tone problem it feels like there’s too many different tones for every character, superman doesn’t quite feel like superman wonder woman doesn’t feel like wonder woman it’s just all over the place. I am still very convinced that when Deadpool comes out it’s gonna make $1 billion.

I like the way I imagined D+ would work: make TV shows out of connecting characters, make movies out of main onesof, make Avengers movies out of teams

A couple thoughts I had throughout this video: 1. A lot of money is going into Disney Plus shows that we have no way of knowing are profitable. In fact, based off what we do know about these shows, especially the more recent ones, they seem to not be bringing in enough money to justify the expenses. 2. Spider-Verse 2 being the second highest grossing film of the year is not as great as it might sound on paper. A smaller percentage of the money earned goes to Disney since they have to share those earnings with Sony and Columbia Pictures. 3. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 might also not be the best point of reference since a lot of audiences knew that this was the final Guardians movie, at least made by James Gunn. Even ignoring that there were definitely people who went in not knowing that, Gunn will no longer be working on Marvel projects, and it seems like a lot of the actors playing the Guardians that people grew to love won't be returning. 4. The upcoming Marvel projects aren't quite headliners. Yes, a new Captain America movie is going to pull in a large audience, and I think The Marvels has an okay shot at making money, but I have to question where the audience for Echo or Ironheart are. Agatha Coven of Chaos might do well, and Daredevil will likely have an audience based off the success of the Netflix series, but these projects have budgets close to the movies, and it's very hard to believe that they will bring in those profits. Also, it's going to be very hard to get an audience for Thunderbolts when the best way to describe it is "MCU Suicide Squad" given the reputation of that film, and the less than impressive roster of living MCU villains. 5. Some of these projects have absolutely gotten upset by recent developments. If rumors about the planned Fantastic 4 cast dropping out are true, than that movie is going to be going through even more problems. The big bad they had planned for the new phase is on trial for some very serious crimes, so they have to redo their plans for future projects involving Kang, whether it be recasting him or replacing the character entirely. And obviously, the actors and writers strike is pushing a lot of these projects back, and if things go in the favor of the unions, then Marvel is either going to have to spend more money on these movies to properly compensate the people working on them, or will have to remove the budget from other departments. Either way, it would make less financial sense to have to increase the costs to make these movies when they're pumping 3 of them out a year on top of 3 streaming shows a year. These are why I feel cutting back on MCU projects is ultimately a sense making idea. Some are more strong points than others, but I still think that ultimately, cutting back on Marvel stuff is fine.

Nando's moustache is looking real good 😮

personally i love long winded videos that talk about anything superhero related or adjacent. fills the air nicely on my commutes. thanks nando

I think that is by scaling down production, he means slowing down to make sure there is time of the script, the CGI, and the marketing I think it’s a great idea.

re: Disney merchandizing decisions One thing that should help with context is that when the Mandalorian s1 first aired, I was part of the QA team for the official Shop Disney website, and they 100% were NOT ready for baby Yoda to be a hit. We got slammed with requests for baby yoda stuff and they basically had to rush early-release their one debut plush they were planning on putting on sale during Christmas just to placate rabid fans. We were all dumbfounded that nobody higher up considered this would be huge. For how good Disney is at creating merchandise-friendly media, they are actually shockingly bad at recognizing it half the time.