Disney CEO Bob Iger has come under fire for his abrasive comments in response to the Writers Guild of America strike, which has just been joined by SAG-AFTRA. He’s also criticized the amount of Marvel Disney Plus shows the company has put out. 

“There have been some disappointments. We would have liked some of our more recent releases to perform better,” Iger said. “It’s reflective not as a problem from a personnel perspective, but I think in our zeal to basically grow our content significantly to serve mostly our streaming offerings, we ended up taxing our people way beyond — in terms of their time and their focus — way beyond where they had been. 

“Marvel’s a great example of that. They had not been in the TV business at any significant level. 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. That is, I think, more of the cause than anything.”

There is some level of truth to this — it is harder to follow Marvel than ever before especially when all their shows adopt weekly episode release schedules — but this also feels like a huge deflection from Iger. Arguably what has impacted Disney’s recent films more at the box office is the fact that they’ve been releasing during packed summer weeks (“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” for instance, had to compete with “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” “Elemental,” “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” and “The Flash”) and the fact that people have become more selective about what they’re going to the movie theater to see. I live in a city where tickets to our local theater are still $10, but especially for people in large metro areas, it’s much more expensive to do so. 

There’s also the fact that, thanks to COVID pressures, there are a lot less movie theaters. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the country lost some 2,000 screens during the pandemic. For areas that lost their only movie theater — like the city of North Adams did in the county I live in — that means longer commutes to see a movie and an increased chance that showings for high-demand films will be crowded. Shrinking theatrical windows also give audiences less incentive to go to the theater — studios have been coalescing around a 45-day window between the end of a theatrical run and a film’s debut on streaming. Missed “The Flash”? It’ll most likely be on Max in a few months. 

Another notable trend I’ve noticed with some of Disney’s releases is the overreliance on franchise recognition and not enough work building up modern brands. This is especially true for its recent Marvel offerings; I think Disney saw the unexpected breakout success of “Guardians of the Galaxy” — a weird franchise that came out of nowhere — and wrongfully assumed that anything Marvel-related was destined to be a success. It dug into its archives, giving lesser-known heroes like Shang-Chi, the Eternals and Ms. Marvel their own movies and TV shows with middling marketing and success; it also doesn’t help that they are all perhaps the most boilerplate of recent MCU offerings.

Arguably the most popular recent MCU projects are those that the studio put effort into making enjoyable and marketing, like “Moon Knight,” “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “WandaVision” and “Loki.” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” arguably released at the wrong time and was a film that needed a lot of work on the marketing side to get audiences to buy into; after the lackluster reception to “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” 15 years ago, viewers weren’t clamoring for another outing from an aging Harrison Ford. 

This is an interesting time for the entertainment industry. Theaters are still recovering from COVID-19 as they grapple with entertainment consumption habits that might have forever changed due to the pandemic. The power movie theaters have — especially in terms of the exclusivity of blockbuster films — has greatly diminished. It’s arguable that Marvel has been the one constant and consistent commodity for theaters and arguably brought them back to life — “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was the first film to make $1 billion since 2019 — but even Disney is disappointed with the performances of its Marvel films, if Iger’s comments speak for the company.

Simply put, even the “gold standard” for theatrical films in the COVID era have had its fair share of stumbles. If theaters want to remain relevant, they will have to address stark competition from streaming and claw back the advantages they once had over them, especially in terms of exclusivity and the length of time after which films can hit streaming.