"No New Fans Club": Major MCU Report Details What Went Wrong At Marvel Studios In The Early 2020s And How Kevin Feige Is Getting The Franchise Back On Track

A new report about what went wrong for the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the early 2020s reveals how Kevin Feige is now on a journey to bring Marvel Studios back to its prime. Following the thrilling conclusion to The Infinity Saga with Avengers: Endgame, the beginning of The Multiverse Saga had a lot of mixed results. While the global COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact, Marvel Studios was also given new mandates by Disney, which played into how Phases 4 and 5 began to take several hits.

A new detailed report from Wall Street Journal sheds more light on how the early 2020s put Marvel Studios on a negative trajectory due to CEO Bob Iger’s mandate that forced Feige to try to “satisfy parent company Disney’s hunger for content” on Disney+ when it first debuted. Because of the excessive increase in MCU content for Disney+, it stretched Feige and his team thin. It got to the point where employees who worked on the 2020s Marvel projects said it was “challenging to secure enough time with Feige to get his feedback.”

This resulted in various creative teams having work they spent weeks fine-tuning that became “irrelevant once he weighed in,” leading to having extremely limited time to apply Feige’s changes ahead of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅlines they needed to meet for their projects. The report also mentions that staffers were forced to chase Feige “in the halls to get answers.”

Per WSJ, Feige had told colleagues that he only agreed to Iger’s plans “because of a zealousness to tell more stories and a desire to be an ‘excellent corporate citizen,’” which ended up landing Marvel Studios with multiple theatrical releases that were rushed and underperformed at the box office. However, Feige is correcting the course, as they have been actively working on going back to quality over quanтιтy.

One of the big factors that they are attempting to undo is the trend of Marvel having accidentally created a “no new fans club,” as the MCU began to feel like homework if they hadn’t watched various movies or TV shows ahead of time. Part of Feige’s course-correcting also includes limiting Marvel Television to two live-action shows a year, telling stories that are largely unconnected to the franchise, while he will be back with a bigger focus on the film side.

What The Marvel Report Means For The MCU’s Future

The MCU put out more content throughout the early 2020s, and while there were numerous successes such as WandaVision, Loki, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, it didn’t take long for both the industry and audience to notice cracks in the machine. The WSJ report makes it very clear that Feige is looking to avoid as many of those mistakes as possible, with Phase 6 being a perfect example, as it has only a handful of films planned for release. That also explains why the long-awaited Blade movie isn’t being rushed following numerous creative changes behind the scenes, and why Marvel is taking their time getting to the MCU’s X-Men plans.

It also appears the MCU TV shows will be allowed to breathe a little easier without having to worry about mᴀssive tie-ins to the films. In light of that solution, it will allow Marvel Television to get back on track with running more traditional series, especially following Daredevil: Born Again’s creative overhaul. The latest MCU report about Feige’s course-correction also justifies why several MCU TV shows have paused development, which are more than likely now all getting saved to happen sometime after The Multiverse Saga’s conclusion – if at all.

Our Take On The Marvel Report And MCU Future

While the MCU report shows a lot of promise for Marvel Studios going forward, time will tell how long it will take before the franchise feels like it used to before the excessive content mandates. With the MCU timeline launching Phase 6 this summer to finish this huge storyline, it will be fascinating to see how Feige’s fix will take shape when they get into Phase 7 and beyond, especially once the X-Men characters come into play. Hopefully, the effects of what Feige and Marvel Studios are fixing behind the scenes will become even more noticeable for the MCU.