10 Problems With Marvel's Phase 4 (And How To Solve Them)
7. There Aren’t Very Many Movies On This Slate
So Black Widow is out next May, and Eternals is out six months after that, in November next year. That’s only two MCU movies in theatres in 2020, and the one coming up is a full ten months after Spider-Man: Far From Home (and, as mentioned, it’s a prequel set six years or so before the current 2023-set continuity).
It’s not much, is it? Yes, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier is debuting sometime in autumn 2020, but this franchise is called the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not the Marvel Multi-platform Universe. A TV series on a brand new paying digital platform is not the same thing as a major cinema release, no matter how Disney tries to spin it.
From dominating the release schedules, Marvel Studios have stepped back to releasing only two movies in the next year and a half.
The solution is… well, to amend the slate. What’s been announced is subject to change - that’s always been the case. Remember, at one point the Inhumans project was a film, not a TV series.
There’s also no reason in the world why Marvel Studios can’t greenlight lower budget stories for cinema release which could slot in between major tentpole releases. Arguably, some of these Disney+ projects could have been movies that filled these roles.
Look at the two Deadpool films - these were made for a third the cost of the cheapest MCU movies, and you can’t really tell the difference. Lower budgets mean lower expectations, but allow for greater storytelling capacity.