When Disney launched its own streaming platform, Disney+, in November 2019, the company promised that the platform would be the ultimate spot for Disney fans to watch their favorite classic and recent Disney films, along with some unforgettable shows from Disney Junior, the millennial Disney Channel era, and more. And while the platform launched with some original shows, including The Mandalorian, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, The Imagineering Story, and The World According to Jeff Goldblum, the company promised many new original series were on the way.
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Since then, Disney has released more than 80 original shows, nearly 30 short films, and around 40 original films. Some of the shows saw a lot of success, like The Mandalorian, Loki, Andor, WandaVision, Agatha All Along, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and Ahsoka.
Unfortunately, more shows saw no success and were canceled after just one or two seasons, including The Mysterious Benedict Society, Willow, National Treasure: Edge of History, Diary of a Future President, Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, Big Shot, Turner & Hooch, The Muppets Mayhem, and American Born Chinese.
Many of the shows were meant to help drive audiences towards big franchises like Marvel and Lucasfilm; however, according to Marvel President Kevin Feige and a new report from TheWrap, Disney+ has had the opposite effect.
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In early July, Feige admitted that having so many Marvel shows on Disney+ ended up hurting more than they were helping. Before Disney+, Marvel could experiment with its movies, and the movies that were a part of the Infinity Saga were the most successful films the company has seen. The last film in the Infinity Saga was Avengers: Endgame, which came out just seven months before the launch of Disney+.
However, Disney+ wasn’t as much about experimentation as it was about expansion.
Feige specifically pointed to “The Marvels,” the sequel to 2019’s $1 billion-grossing “Captain Marvel,” which brought in $206 million globally, as the movie that was “hit hardest” by the new emphasis on Disney+ and the inclusion of characters from Marvel shows. “People are like, ‘OK, I recognize her from a billion-dollar movie. But who are those other two? I guess they were in some TV show. I’ll skip it,’” Feige said of the story that paired Brie Larson with Marvel TV stars Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani.
Later, Feige got more blunt: “The expansion is what devalued [the Marvel brand]. It was just too much. It was a big company push. And it doesn’t take too much to push us to go. There was a mandate that we were put in the middle of.”
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A deeper dive by TheWrap shows that Marvel is not the only major studio owned by Disney that has been negatively affected by Disney+. Pixar and Lucasfilm have also been hurt by producing multiple shows for the streaming platform.
Nearly every one of Disney’s core brands – in addition to Marvel Studios, Pixar and Lucasfilm – have been diminished by the company’s direct-to-consumer streaming platform and that platform’s insatiable thirst for fresh content.
Over the last five years, Marvel and Star Wars Disney+ shows — with some exceptions — have seen declining streaming minutes as each subsequent series debuts, with Star Wars peaking with the second season of “The Mandalorian” in 2021 through “Skeleton Crew” in 2024, which failed to even make the weekly top 10 for Nielsen.
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Both Marvel and Pixar were hoping to get their films back on track with their recent releases, but the films have not performed as expected. In fact, Pixar’s newest film, Elio, which was released on June 20, had the studio’s worst box office opening to date. The film beat out Soul (2020), Luca (2021), and Turning Red (2022), which never got theatrical premieres.
There were ripple effects at the box office, with Marvel’s “Captain America: Brave New World,” which brought in $415 million globally, and “Thunderbolts,” which did $382 million, both disappointments compared to previous franchises and when factoring in their respective budgets (both cost around $200 million to produce). And just this past weekend, “The Fantastic Four” dropped a huge 66% from its $118 million opening weekend, dashing hopes that this film would get Marvel back on track at the box office.
On the Pixar front, “Elio” has been a catastrophe, bringing in $138.6 so far at the global box office, making it the worst performing Pixar film in history, ranking below even “Onward,” a movie that opened right before the pandemic lockdown began.
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When he returned as CEO of The Walt Disney Company in November 2022, Bob Iger realized that Disney+ was a major problem. The streamer had cost Disney billions of dollars, and big changes had to be made. During a company town hall meeting, he admitted that the company became too focused on putting out a lot of content and lost sight of the quality of that content.
Under Iger’s leadership, many Disney+ shows were canceled, and those that remained saw their budgets cut. Iger did say that the company would continue to make new Marvel and Star Wars shows, but they would not be making as many and would take a more critical about the content they were producing.
Do you agree that Disney+ has “devalued” films from Marvel, Pixar, and Lucasfilm? Do you think Disney should stop making new shows from those universes? Or should they just make less of them? What is your favorite Disney+ original series? What show do you wish Disney hadn’t canceled? Let us know what you think in the comments!
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