Marvel is retooling as it prepares Fantastic Four and Avengers movies – The Hollywood Reporter

Illustration by Kagan Macleod

A little over a year ago, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Obsession It’s set to take Marvel Studios to the next level. A new villain will be introduced, paving the way for several years of storytelling. The film itself was a colossal take on a franchise that had previously been modest in scope. Instead, the Peyton Reed-directed film heralded a year of mistakes, box office blunders and PR nightmares. It was uncharted territory for Marvel, which had been steadily turning out gold at the box office for 15 years.

But Disney’s division in the midst of February is pretty good, all things considered, despite the general gloom surrounding the superhero genre as of late. Super Bowl promo Deadpool Wolverine The trailer became the most viewed of all time, with 365 million views in 24 hours. Yes, Disney’s calculations include 123 million people who tuned in to the game, which included only 30 seconds of the trailer, but whether it cheated the Super Bowl or not, the clip’s reach was an encouraging number for the studio whose final film, Wondersbecame the lowest-grossing film in the 33-film MCU series, grossing just $206 million worldwide.

Then came Valentine’s Day when the cast was revealed The Fantastic Four – Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn, along with vintage art depicting the film’s 1960s setting. (The Fantastic Four are a cornerstone of the Marvel mythos, with writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby introducing the team in 1961 The Fantastic Four 1, the comic that will kick off the Marvel Universe, so the symbolic launch of the new team carries a lot of weight for the movie division. This will be the third incarnation of the Fantastic Four to hit the big screen, not counting Roger Corman’s infamous version.)

A day later, Marvel released the trailer for the film X-Men ’97, a revival of the 1990s cartoon that debuted in March. The trailer set an internal Disney record as the biggest launch for an animated series on Disney+, ahead of other Marvel shows like what if …? And any animation star Wars series.

These public-facing moves come as studio head Kevin Feige resets creative direction behind the scenes. In early February, the company completed reshoots for Agatha: Darkhold Diarythe WandaVision A spinoff starring Kathryn Hahn is expected to arrive on Disney+ this fall. The company typically allocates five days of reshoots in the schedule, but the studio completed the work in just one day, fueling a sunny outlook on the show internally, according to sources connected to the series.

The studio also quietly hired Eric Pearson to polish the script The Fantastic FourWhich will be filmed this summer in London. Pearson is one of the company’s founders who worked on it Motorcycle rental And Black Widow He has a good reputation for bringing projects to the finish line. The stakes for this film are high, as the studio is still searching for characters and actors who can move its universe forward following the exit of Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans.

Marvel has also hired Joanna Callow, host of the acclaimed FX series The bearTo work on the script for Lightning, Hollywood Reporter to learn. Filming for the film is scheduled to begin in March in Atlanta. Her hiring adds a touch of prestige to the project, which stars Florence Pugh and — according to a source who has read earlier drafts of the script — focuses on villains and heroes who go on a quest that was supposed to end in their deaths.

Marvel is also cleaning up the creative mess it left in the wake of Jonathan Majors, an actor who was previously on the rise to play the primary villain in the next installment. Avengers But who was convicted in December of third-degree reckless assault and harassment in a Manhattan court after a domestic incident with his former partner, a movement coach he met while working at Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Obsession. Marvel dropped Majors hours after the conviction and is rewriting those films, which will now either reduce the character or ax him altogether. The first of the new Avengers The films, scheduled for release in 2026, were tentatively titled Avengers: Kang Dynasty But we’ll get a new title to remove the character’s name, though sources say that even before Majors’ conviction, the studio was taking steps to downplay the character afterward. Quantum obsession Underperformed, with a total of $476 million.

On the television side, Marvel has reorganized its operations to allow greater control on the part of the series’ creators, a move made after the disastrous failure of Samuel L. Jackson’s high-profile spy series. Secret invasion, which sidelined executive producer Kyle Bradstreet after a year, with various creative factions vying for influence in its wake. The show has garnered about 2.5 billion minutes of viewing over six weeks, according to Nielsen, in the bottom third of Marvel’s live-action Disney+ shows so far.

“The focus is internal this year,” says one person familiar with all the tinkering going on behind the scenes.

Executives aren’t calling it a reboot, not even a soft reboot, but more of a creative retooling. It’s no secret that since 2019 Avengers: Endgame, the company was required to expand in an unprecedented way to fuel its emerging streaming service, Disney+, which was then a top priority for Disney, which was in the midst of the streaming wars. First under Disney CEO Bob Iger, and then his short-lived successor, Bob Chapek, Marvel expanded into television series and animation, aiming for the MCU to become a place with a seemingly endless parade of releases throughout the year. It was a request that proved too impractical to sustain.

“Some of our studios have lost a little bit of focus. So the first step we took is we scaled back,” Iger said on an earnings call on February 7. “We scaled back production, especially at Marvel,” in order to ensure that “the films “What you make could be better.”

As the Hollywood strikes ended in November, the studio delayed Captain America: New World Order Seven months until February 14, 2025, to give him time to do reshoots. “Eger described Captain America 4, starring Anthony Mackie, is among the 2025 Disney releases he was most excited about during the earnings call. And he did not mention codeWhich led to speculation that it would be moved from the November 2025 date; Marvel is unlikely to release four films that year given Iger’s mandate to scale back.

Ironically, the double whammy of writers and actors, while costly to Hollywood, gave Marvel some breathing room. She was able to reschedule her films so that it would be just that Deadpool Wolverine It will be released in 2024. And only two series — sound echo And Agatha — It bows on Disney+ this year. Other films remain in the script stage, while television shows (e.g Iron heart) has been filmed, but there is no release date in sight. It’s all designed to give the creators some breathing room and give fans the chance to miss the MCU for a bit.

“They’re not giving up,” says a source who has worked with Marvel for the past year. “They want to make something great.”

This story appeared in the February 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.