Disney is a Cinematic Universe Company
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For decades, we've been talking about productivity all wrong. That's how we ended up with the hustle bros and endless to-do lists and days filled with meetings and meetings about those meetings. It just can't be the answer. So this month on The Verge Cast, in a series brought to you by Amazon Business, we're exploring a different way.

The tools that you can use to get things done without burning out and without spending so much time on menial tasks. Different ways of thinking about what productivity means and how we might measure it. All in service of trying to get a little more done in a better way. All that on The Verge Cast, wherever you get podcasts.

The first half of 2024 was defined by a slew of A-list album releases. But the second half, that belongs to the newcomers. I'm Rihanna Cruz, senior producer of Switched on Pop. And over the course of our brand new series, The Newcomers, we'll be talking to some artists, popular in their own right, that are popping off right now and who we think you should be listening to.

There's our pop darlings, Latin superstars, and those in between. Tune into Switched on Pop wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Amazon Prime. A long time ago, well, back in 2005, Disney appointed Bob Iger CEO. And since that moment, Iger's been zipping around the galaxy, collecting big tent film franchises the way Thanos collected Infinity Stones. Inevitable.

It's been the backbone of Iger's entertainment strategy for nearly two decades, buying up more and more bankable franchises, including gigantic acquisitions like Pixar for $7-ish billion, which brought the company some new toys. You are a child!

A little after that, he bought Marvel for $4 billion, which of course included the groundwork for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the MCU. I'm here to talk to you about the Avenger Initiative. Then, he bought Lucasfilm for another $4 billion. With it, the Indiana Jones franchise, and of course, all of Star Wars. Once more, the Sith will rule the galaxy.

Hellbent on galactic domination via IP, several years ago, Iger made another buy, his biggest by far: Disney bought 21st Century Fox for a cool $71 billion and change. With that purchase, Disney now owns major franchises like Avatar, which has the first and third highest grossing movies of all time. It's got The Simpsons, X-Files, Alien, Predator, even The Planet of the Apes.

And also, it acquired the rights to several extremely popular Marvel characters previously left out of the MCU. Until now. Oh, hello.

I know, right? Whose balls did I have to fondle to get my very own movie? That's right. Deadpool is joining the MCU. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Is that supposed to be scary? Pegging isn't new for me, friendo, but it is for Disney. This will be the first ever R-rated MCU movie. It'll also be the only Marvel release in 2024.

So the stakes are high for the film's writer, producer, and director, Sean Levy. I do note the momentous importance of this movie, given its timing, and its

for Marvel, for Disney, and frankly now, for the theatrical movie business in general. Even a few years back, when Levy and creative partner Ryan Reynolds were kicking around script ideas, the pressure was mounting. Several MCU movies had recently underperformed, and worries of superhero fatigue had started to snowball.

When I sat down with Levy, he told me he had the tricky task of figuring out how to introduce a foul-mouthed, fourth-wall-breaking antihero into a family-friendly franchise, all while keeping his Disney overlords happy. Kevin Feige rightfully wanted a Deadpool movie that felt well-suited to the MCU, but that bullseye is small. We worked for months. Still, we couldn't crack it.

A lot of cool ideas, but nothing was quite right. And nothing was quite right for Ryan and I and Marvel. And honestly, we were very close to giving up. Wow. We went through at least a half dozen different stories. Wow. To which one of us ultimately said, no, that's not it. That's not it. And then we get a call from Hugh Jackman.

Jackman, a now 55-year-old man who played Wolverine for over two decades in nine movies, had famously retired playing the character back in 2017. But at that moment, he wanted back in.

That's what we're reading. Damn straight it is. Disney brought him back. They're going to make him do this till he's 90. That's what's fucking bonkers. We are scratching at stories that don't feel quite right. And literally out of the blue, on a weekday in August, two years ago, Hugh Jackman calls and says, guys, I want in. I'm gut checking. I put the clause down years ago.

I want a Wolverine Deadpool movie. Deadpool and a Wolverine. Can you imagine the fun? Next day, we had a scheduled Zoom with Marvel. We anticipated that conversation being about

the pause button on this movie because we hadn't cracked it. And instead, because Hugh had called the day before, that conversation became Ryan and I saying, hey, Kevin, we got an interesting phone call. And suddenly we were off to the races. Just in time. Because right now, Marvel is in a slump. It's not entirely up to Deadpool and Wolverine to fix it, but it would sure help if they got the ball rolling.

This slump is not just a Marvel problem. There hasn't been a Star Wars movie in five years, and the last one was a financial and creative disappointment. But these two properties, Marvel and Star Wars, are the crown jewels of Disney's IP empire. They're the highest-grossing franchises in film history. Big box office returns bring in money, but they also drive interest to Disney's other core businesses: theme parks, merchandise, even cruise ships. And they've been key in building out the Disney+ streaming service, too.

The IP buffet felt endless, until it didn't. As Disney asked for more and more content to satisfy its business needs, the creative process suffered. Both Marvel and Star Wars were overburdened and began to underdeliver. So, Disney is having to reassess its strategies around both properties, to look back at how business decisions undermine creative ones, and now, how to rekindle audience interest in two beloved franchises that used to feel bulletproof.

I'm Chris Lee, senior reporter for Vulture and New York Magazine, covering the business side of Hollywood. And this is Land of the Giants, The Disney Dilemma. You've become part of a bigger universe. You just don't know it yet. When Disney bought Marvel in 2009, the MCU was just getting started. A couple of movies had come out, and plans were already underway to make Avengers, the first of the epic Marvel team-up movies under the helm of studio president Kevin Feige.

Disney supercharged Marvel's ability to finance, distribute, and promote these big-budget movies. And what happens after Disney buys Marvel cannot be understated. Together, they go on the greatest financial run in cinema history. More than 30 films, over $30 billion at the box office alone, not to mention merchandising, cultural impact, and brand awareness galore. It took over the box office. It took over pop culture. It took over moviemaking.

And that just doesn't happen, right? One series just took over the way that we consumed movies. Jeff Bock is a box office analyst with Exhibitor Relations, and he says that for the last decade, every franchise and every studio aspired to have a cinematic universe. It changed Hollywood.

It changed the way Hollywood thought about filmmaking, for better or for worse. The MCU did something more than just make sequels. Marvel created a blueprint for something new, a giant continuous story spanning multiple movies in which characters would headline some films and then pop up in others as supporting cast. Numerous other franchises have tried this. Few of them have worked. Remember Universal Pictures' Dark Universe with Tom Cruise's remake of The Mummy? No, you don't.

But the MCU worked. Nothing else came close to matching its success. And the really impressive part is that Marvel pulled it off by banding together a group of B- and C-list comic book characters like Iron Man and the Hulk, because at the time, it didn't have the rights to use A-listers like Spider-Man or the X-Men. These lesser characters would go on to become just as big, and in many cases, even more profitable. Don't touch my life!

We'd never seen anything like that. You drop Black Panther in, again, a C-list character at best in the Marvel Universe. Boom. Billion dollars. You get a billion. You get a billion. Captain Marvel, you get a billion. It was crazy. It was nuts. And Disney was just like, I can't believe our good fortune. We have the biggest films at the box office. We're selling the most merchandising. And we got this thing for a steal. Four billion dollars. Are you kidding? It was a steal.

And behind all of this success was the man with the plan, Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios and chief architect of the various phases, storylines, and character arcs that were meticulously planned out across film-spanning years.

The MCU is a well-organized machine, but as longtime Hollywood insider and co-founder of Puck News, Matt Bellany, points out, that also meant that directors on these films had relatively little authorship. At Marvel, you sort of know that it's Kevin Feige's world that you are stepping into, and you don't have as much of a say in how these projects play out. Feige developed a detailed plan for everything over years, and that all paid off with Avengers Endgame in 2019. ♪

Avengers! Assemble. Directed by the Russo brothers, the epic run of over a decade of storylines converges into one big satisfying finale, a battle between every MCU superhero and their arch-villain Thanos. With all six stones, I could simply snap my fingers. They would all cease to exist. The fans loved it, so much so that it's the second highest grossing movie of all time.

But the thing about Endgame is that it felt like an ending. Thanos was defeated, the Infinity Stones were destroyed, the universe was no longer at stake, and even several of Marvel's biggest characters had hung up their super suits. - Only thing bumming me out is the fact that I have to live in a world without Captain America. - Chris Evans' Captain America retires, Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man dies, and in real life, Chadwick Boseman, the actor playing Black Panther, tragically passed away.

After Endgame, a lot of the momentum that propelled the MCU was just kind of gone. It's tough to continue that. The burnout was almost inevitable. There was no way they were going to sustain billion-dollar hit after billion-dollar hit. Again, you're killing off some of your characters. You're losing a little steam there. And just months after the Avengers vanquished their greatest enemy, the studio suddenly had a new war to fight, a streaming war.

With Netflix stock going off and Wall Street convinced streaming was the future, Disney felt it had no choice but to launch its own streaming service, Disney+. But a streaming service requires streaming shows. So Disney hit the "Make More Marvel" button. Now I could spend 90 minutes talking about what we've done. Or I could spend some time talking about what we're about to do.

This is Kevin Feige on stage at Comic-Con 2019, introducing phase four of the MCU, aka life after Endgame. He rattles off a ton of new Marvel movies: The Eternals, Doctor Strange, a new Thor, and then an entire slate of streaming shows. Disney+ is giving Marvel Studios an opportunity to tell so many more stories that we haven't been able to tell before.

He introduced WandaVision, Loki, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and said all of these stories would feed into each other, cross-pollinating from movies to streaming and back. The MCU had just expanded in a big way. We're making Black Panther 2. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is coming. We don't have time to talk about Captain Marvel 2. Feige's mandate seemed obvious. Parlay Marvel's blockbuster success at the box office into hits on the small screen.

This next phase was ambitious. Feige needed to double, even triple output across film and now streaming. Maybe too ambitious.

I think they were overworked. The ramp up on the Disney Plus shows and the requirement that those shows be integrated into the MCU movies really put a lot of strain on the company. And they were producing more than they ever had. It's a very delicate dance. And then you add in the fact that they were working in a post-Covid

endgame environment where they did not have available to them a lot of the characters that had defined the MCU. I think that really challenged them

Suddenly, the MCU went from releasing just three movies in 2019 to an avalanche of content in 2021. Four separate live-action streaming shows spanning 27 combined episodes. That's on top of four new films. Deadline pressures were intense. Disney would routinely hire indie directors fresh out of the Sundance Film Festival, who had never had to handle $200 million projects filled with visual effects and action sequences.

It was a tough time for the VFX team. In fact, I broke some stories that detail how awful Marvel execs behaved towards artists working on some of these films. Impossible deadlines, creative indecision, overwork, and underpayment have all been typical for VFX workers on Marvel movies.

We ran this by Disney, by the way. No comment. These movies have release dates and they're barreling towards these dates. And that's why you end up with a Doctor Strange movie where the CGI pretty clearly is not finished. And you end up with an Ant-Man movie where there's blurs on the sides and it just looks kind of cheap.

From 2021 to 2023, Marvel churned out 20 more live-action movies and series. All are interconnected in some way. Suddenly, for fans, there were so many storylines to keep track of. The thing I kept hearing at the time? This is not fun. This is homework. It was too connected. Every film, every series was connected to another in too many ways.

It really did get ensnared and weighed down, I think, by the weight of these multiverses. To fully appreciate the latest Doctor Strange movie, you had to have seen the end of WandaVision. And to understand the villain in Ant-Man, well, you had to have streamed Loki.

No, you can't get to the end until you've been changed by the journey. Disney, I think incorrectly, determined that the fans would follow from the movies to Disney Plus and back and forth. I think they realized that...

TV is TV and movies are movies, and you can't expect everybody to be fully caught up when they go to the movie. And the MCU, which had previously relied on the success of spinning up B-list characters, was starting to feel like a real who's who of D-listers. You had things come out like Eternals and Shang-Chi and...

The Ant-Man sequels, like, it was kind of doing almost karaoke Marvel. It didn't feel like an energized storyline, at least to a lot of fans. In 2021, The Eternals made around $400 million globally, but cost more than $200 million to make. 2023's The Marvels did even worse. At around $200 million, it's the MCU's lowest-grossing film ever.

Not all Marvel movies were a bust in this post-Endgame hangover, but enough flopped for all this to look pretty bad for Disney. I think they needed a reality check. And this was a slap in the face reality check, right? And so they have to course correct.

Disney misjudged its audience, and in launching Disney+, it strained its creative by demanding too many things. CEO Bob Iger, during an outdoor interview, admitted this mistake. In our zeal to basically grow our content significantly to serve our, mostly our streaming offerings,

We ended up taxing our people way beyond where they had been. Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series. And frankly, it diluted focus and attention.

Later, on an earnings call with fewer birds, Iger said it was time for the MCU to slow down. We're slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four, and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, to at the maximum three. And we're working hard on what that path is.

Now, the Marvel slump hasn't just been about too much mediocre content with too few beloved characters. The last several years have been incredibly unstable for the entertainment industry as a whole. There was a global pandemic that closed down theaters, Hollywood strikes that disrupted productions and releases. China, the world's largest theatrical market, didn't screen any Marvel movies between 2020 and 2022.

Then there was the great streaming correction. Netflix reported its first ever loss of subscribers. Wall Street freaked. Not just on Netflix, but anyone with a streaming service. Disney lost billions in value almost overnight, and the economics of streaming was turned upside down. And while all that was going on, Disney was playing musical chairs with CEOs named Bob.

When Iger retook his seat as CEO, his message was clear. Marvel's current strategy wasn't working. Too many films and definitely too much streaming content. The company was scaling back. But a funny thing had happened with Disney's other IP behemoth. After years of missteps and fan revolts, it was streaming that actually restored balance to the force. That story, after the break.

For decades, we've been talking about productivity all wrong. That's how we ended up with the hustle bros and endless to-do lists and days filled with meetings and meetings about those meetings. It just can't be the answer. So this month on The Verge Cast, in a series brought to you by Amazon Business, we're exploring a different way.

The tools that you can use to get things done without burning out and without spending so much time on menial tasks. Different ways of thinking about what productivity means and how we might measure it. All in service of trying to get a little more done in a better way. All that on The Verge Cast, wherever you get podcasts.

The first half of 2024 was defined by a slew of A-list album releases. But the second half, that belongs to the newcomers. I'm Rihanna Cruz, senior producer of Switched on Pop. And over the course of our brand new series, The Newcomers, we'll be talking to some artists, popular in their own right, that are popping off right now and who we think you should be listening to.

There's our pop darlings, Latin superstars, and those in between. Tune into Switched on Pop wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Amazon Prime.

On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Watch Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app to watch live. Learn more at globalcitizen.org.com.

Sometimes all it takes to get a franchise out of a slump is an aggressively cute new character. Grogu? Yes, that's his name. What a precious little creature. Yep, I'm talking about Baby Yoda, a.k.a. Grogu, the unlikely star of the hit Disney Plus series, The Mandalorian. I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold.

The Mandalorian premiered as part of the Disney Plus launch in November 2019, and people loved it. It was a fresh take on the Star Wars brand of space western. Created by MCU veteran director Jon Favreau, it was a smaller-scale story with some characters that felt new, but familiar. Here's box office analyst Jeff Bach again. It is a huge high-five to fans because it explores the world in the way that George Lucas explored it back in the day. The

He is strong with the Force, but talent without training is nothing.

It looks like the same world that that original trilogy lived in. And that is so key. The company, of course, threw Baby Yoda into its merchandising machine. There were Baby Yoda jammies, lunchboxes, stuffed animals, Crocs, a mini waffle maker. The little guy was everywhere. Ratings went off, too. According to Parrot Analytics, The Mandalorian briefly beat out Netflix juggernaut Stranger Things as the most in-demand streaming show.

Disney+ had launched with a genuine monocultural hit, rare in the age of streaming. But this was also a rare win for Star Wars. The franchise had been floundering for years under Disney. After the company bought Lucasfilm in 2012, a plan quickly came together to work on a new trilogy that continued the original Star Wars story while also making a number of spin-offs and prequels. Kind of like a cinematic universe.

Disney laid out an ambitious schedule assuring fans they'd get a new Star Wars movie every year. To speed production along on the trilogy, Disney tapped three directors, each to make their own installment. Three years after the acquisition, the first installment of the new trilogy premiered, The Force Awakens, directed by J.J. Abrams. The Force, a Jedi, it's all true.

It did really well and fans seemed mostly delighted by the movie. It grossed over two billion dollars at the box office. In fact, it was the fifth highest grossing film in history. Not bad for a movie that's basically a reheated version of A New Hope. "I'll show you the dark side."

Star Wars was off to a promising start. Two years later, in 2017, The Last Jedi hit theaters. For the second installment, Lucasfilm went with director Rian Johnson, who seemed to want to deconstruct Luke Skywalker and the mythical Jedi. Tomorrow, at dawn, I will teach you the ways of the Jedi. The movie was critically acclaimed, and to some, Johnson brought a whole new perspective to the galaxy.

But to others, especially dudes online, The Last Jedi was an abomination. Hardcore fans were pissed. I will never train another generation of Jedi. It's time for the Jedi to end.

Fans had many nitpicks, but they seemed to really hate the dejected take on the original trilogy's hero, Luke Skywalker. What he did to Luke just doesn't fit with Luke's character. It doesn't make any sense. Henry Walsh was one of those hardcore fans who was outraged by Johnson's vision. My problem was it really felt like he had no respect for

for the IP and even less respect for the hardcore fans. There were messaging throughout his film that were things like, "Let the past die." Kill it if you have to. "Kill it if you must." To me, those were subtle nods. Like, I read the subtext and was like, "Okay, he's telling us to let go." And they were taking intentional shots at a fan base. It felt like a betrayal.

And don't get me started on hyperspace fuel. That was dumb.

Other fans were less constructive with their feedback. There were hate campaigns, review bombing. Some of it got pretty toxic and frankly, pretty racist. We've seen Star Wars fans get upset before, notably during the prequel trilogy in the 90s. But this felt different and much bigger, maybe because social media didn't really exist during the previous trilogy. And this time the fans had a way to amplify their distaste.

The Last Jedi did $1.3 billion at the box office. Not bad at all, but significantly less than its predecessor. The pressure to get the third installment right was mounting. Lucasfilm president and Star Wars steward Kathleen Kennedy fired the director and brought J.J. Abrams back to get the trilogy over the line. Part of that work meant undoing a lot of plot that Rian Johnson had laid out, which had undone a lot of plot that J.J. Abrams had spun up in the first place. You are a palpitant.

The final installment of the trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker, was an absolute mess of a movie that underdelivered in every way. If The Last Jedi was divisive, this one was more along the lines of universally reviled. I think that they damaged the Star Wars brand going forward. Those are always going to be black spots in Star Wars history. And this sentiment was reflected at the box office. It did less than the second film and about half of what the first one did.

Star Wars was both pissing off and shedding its audience. And what was becoming very clear is that unlike the MCU, there seemed to be no roadmap for where to go next. Here's analyst Jeff Bach again. It was very disjointed in terms of story. They did what they had to do to get it out there, but there was never a plan. What Star Wars did have was a production calendar.

I remembered seeing press releases or tweets even about the dates for Star Wars movies where you'd see Disney had staked out Christmas 2017, 2019. So before they had any script or anything developed, they had a date for these movies.

So do you think that that had any effect on the overall quality in this movie? Absolutely. This was a rush job from the get-go. This was a cash cow that Disney saw, and they didn't care how it got done, but it needed to be done by that specific date. And you're right. They did not have time to do justice to this franchise. And then obviously after that, they were rushing it every couple years, right?

If we look at before Awakens came out in 2015, Last Jedi in 2017 and Skywalker in 2019, that's two years between each installment. And that just wasn't enough time. I mean, look what James Cameron has to do with Avatar. It takes him 10 years to make an Avatar film. Right. So these films are not easy to make in terms of just the visual effects needed.

And not to even go into the story mechanisms of these films, to not have those in place, and then to feel like you had to reach those dates and you couldn't push off those dates was probably a headache for everybody involved. That's a problem stemming from the release dates, and that's a business decision. But why? Why strap a rigid release calendar to your most precious franchise? Here's Matt Bellany again.

You need these to come out because there's an entire business associated with them. There are theme park attractions that are in development. There's consumer products where shelves have to be reserved. There's an entire P&L associated with it and an earnings requirement in a quarter. And those movies do move the needle. They are big enough.

Did it matter that the films were enraging fans? That might all depend on how many lightsabers they were buying at Disneyland. That is the number one thing that Disney cares about, really. When they're making films, how can we merchandise these? And if you look at the merchandising sales of Force and then Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker, they went down, down, down. ♪

The Star Wars cinematic universe was just not coming together. The main Skywalker trilogy was a mess, and the other two films during this time, Rogue One and Solo, also had major production issues. Of the five completed films, Kennedy had shaken up leadership on three of them, firing directors, demanding extensive reshoots. She also repeatedly set up and then scrapped plans for additional trilogies with big-name directors attached.

The list of projects and directors over the years was long, with little to show for it. And when Rise of Skywalker underperformed both financially and critically, Kennedy got a lot of the blame. It didn't have anywhere to go. It didn't leave any trails to continue the storyline, which...

When you are managing a franchise is just absolute suicide. How does that happen? That you get this incredible property in Star Wars, you greenlight a Skywalker trilogy to end that story, and then there's nowhere to go based on what you do in that last one? So that's a failure there. By the way, we reached out to Kathleen Kennedy to talk, but were told she was unavailable.

After a string of divisive flops, Kennedy and Star Wars needed a hero, maybe even an anti-hero, just something the fans didn't hate. Disney's new streaming service provided that opportunity. So when we found out that Disney Plus was going to let us make TV shows, we got so excited. And John sat down and pitched the idea of Mandalorian, and it was instantaneous.

The Mandalorian's success may have saved the galaxy and Kennedy's job. That was one of the most important pieces of content in the history of the Walt Disney Company. It launched Disney+. And if it sucked...

it would have been a horrible narrative for Disney+. Turned out, the fans liked it. It was fresh, but, you know, familiar, exactly what Disney loves. And they were able to coast on that for a few years. Aside from Mando, there have been a bunch of Star Wars shows on Disney+, and mostly, like the MCU shows, the response has been mixed. Andor was a critical darling. The Acolyte, not so much.

But there have been zero Star Wars films in the last five years, which is a big problem. Hit movies generate more revenue and brand awareness than streaming shows. So to fix the problem, Disney's like, what if we try making this hit streaming show into a hit movie? This is the way. This is the way. Yep, a Mandalorian movie is coming to a theater near you.

I think Mandalorian and Grogu will work. Obviously, that's going to be a huge film for them, for Disney and the Star Wars universe. If it's not, they've got issues. And if it is a success, and I'm talking about $750 million towards a billion dollars, if it reaches that range, we will see a whole bunch of Mandalorian and Grogu films and explore that universe more. Disney will exploit that. But

But Disney isn't getting ahead of itself this time. There's no arbitrary release calendar for an inevitable slate of sequels, just one release date: 2026. When it comes out, the Mandalorian movie will be the first Star Wars film in seven years. And that, I think, is them taking a risk, I believe, that the IP of the Disney+ show is strong enough to carry a theatrical movie.

That is interesting because it's typically the other way around. And, you know, we'll see if that works. Would not bet against Favreau. This corner of the galaxy is in capable hands with director Jon Favreau. Not only has he stewarded Mandalorian from the get-go, but he's very comfortable working within the Disney system, directing MCU movies, Disney live-action remakes, and now Star Wars.

Meanwhile, the MCU is turning to a director somewhat similar to Favreau, a guy who also knows how to work within studio environments with big stars and make crowd-pleasing movies like Night at the Museum, Free Guy, and now Deadpool and Wolverine. The process on Deadpool and Wolverine has been just by far the most gratifying creative experience of my life.

What was especially shocking to me when I spoke to Levy was hearing how loose things were for him while working with MCU architect Kevin Feige. Levy's experience stands in direct contrast to so many other directors who reportedly did not get near the amount of creative control that he did. To Marvel's credit, they said early on, tell the right story for Logan and Wade.

and you don't have to stress all of the mythology and phase this, phase that, phase that, right? I don't even know what phase we're in technically because from the jump, Ryan and I told Kevin, we're going to do a Deadpool and Wolverine movie. And Marvel really let them go full Deadpool on this one. Want to do some cocaine? Hey, cocaine is the one thing that Feige said is off limits. What about Bolivian marching power? They know all the slang terms. They have a list.

And a lot of people ask me about the rating of the movie. The fun part is not the language or the blood. The fun part is the self-referential awareness because you're able to comment on the thing you're making while you're making it. You're commenting on Kevin Feige. No one is safe.

Deadpool and Wolverine had a massive opening weekend. At over $400 million at the box office worldwide, it's the biggest R-rated debut ever, an important win for Disney, and some reassuring proof that audiences will show up for characters they actually care about. So maybe Deadpool just saved the day. Your little cinematic universe is about to change forever. I'm the Messiah. Air Marvel Jesus.

He self-titles himself Marvel Jesus, a line that we, by the way, wrote long before it was vogue to prognosticate about the slump of Marvel. To be the butt of the joke is a big step in growing up and saying, hey, we took a hit. We know what we did. We're willing to course correct with you guys. Let's make fun of this whole situation and then move on.

So where is Disney moving on to? We don't totally know, but we have some clues, and they point to a future that looks quite a bit like the past. Next year is bringing us a new Captain America, as well as a new Fantastic Four movie. Each of those appear to be steps on the path to setting up another epic multi-part Avengers team-up. And to pull all that off, Disney is returning to three very familiar faces, all of whom walked away from the MCU after Endgame.

Directing duo the Russo brothers and Robert Downey Jr., the MCU's original star, are all returning for the next two Avengers movies, slated for 2026 and 2027. But can they replicate their past success? It's going to be a huge challenge to get to the level of Avengers: Endgame. That may have been the peak of the genre.

Matt Bellany is doubtful the MCU can ever get all the way back to where it once was, but he says if anyone can do it, it's this franchise. MCU is number one, still. Still, I would pick Marvel over any of the others. It just has the most goodwill, the most fans. A creative tweak and reboot can do wonders for this franchise.

We still don't know what's next for Deadpool or Wolverine, but after their huge opening, it's safe to assume they'll also be returning in some capacity, and so will Sean Levy.

What I can tell you is I'm definitely going to make more Marvel movies in my future. And Marvel isn't the only major Disney franchise Levy could help out of a slump. Now, there was that variety piece that touched on a lot of different stuff that you were doing. And in that, you indicated that you'd had a conversation with Kathy Kennedy and that, you know, similarly, she was like,

I want you to do a Star Wars and I want Sean Levy special sauce to be on it. I think it's safe to say the truth, which is that that movie is in very active development. Everything in development is by definition, a maybe it gets made, but it's a movie I'd love to make.

God, I have so many questions that I know you can't answer because active development doesn't mean that you signed on the dotted line and that you, you know, are attached to it per se. I am definitely attached. Okay, you're definitely attached. I am developing a movie for myself to direct. It's way too soon to start calling Sean Levy Jedi Jesus or Marvel's Messiah for that matter.

Disney will need more than just one hit movie from one hit franchise to clear its slump. It needs to find directors it trusts and let them make movies based on creative decisions, not just business ones. It also needs to go on epic, cinematic, world-building runs, an infinity saga of never-ending IP expansion and box office bangers. That's Disney's real endgame.

So much of Disney's success over the past two decades has been the result of Bob Iger's leadership and vision. But he can't be CEO forever. Eventually, he'll need to name a successor and step aside, right? I think being the head of Disney is a very strong drug, you know, very hard to let go. Leaving Disney, it's a big deal, you know, it's a very identity-defining thing. Next time on Land of the Giants, a succession drama for the ages.

Land of the Giants: The Disney Dilemma is produced by Vulture and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Zach Mack produced this episode. Charlotte Silver is our lead producer. Jolie Myers is our editor. Claire Cronin is our fact checker. Brandon McFarlane composed the theme and mixed and scored this episode. Neil Janowitz is the editor-in-chief of Vulture. Art Chung is our showrunner. Nishat Kurwa is our executive producer.

And I'm Chris Lee. If you like this episode, tell a friend and follow us to hear our next episode when it drops next Wednesday. Ciao for now. For decades, we've been talking about productivity all wrong. That's how we ended up with the hustle bros and endless to-do lists and days filled with meetings and meetings about those meetings. It just can't be the answer. So this month on The Verge Cast, in a series brought to you by Amazon Business, we're exploring a different way.

The tools that you can use to get things done without burning out and without spending so much time on menial tasks. Different ways of thinking about what productivity means and how we might measure it. All in service of trying to get a little more done in a better way. All that on The Verge Cast, wherever you get podcasts.

The first half of 2024 was defined by a slew of A-list album releases. But the second half, that belongs to the newcomers. I'm Rihanna Cruz, senior producer of Switched on Pop. And over the course of our brand new series, The Newcomers, we'll be talking to some artists, popular in their own right, that are popping off right now and who we think you should be listening to.

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