The Marvel Cinematic Multiverse

[Dogg Thang]

Well, they’re not kind of part of the MCU. The whole point of that was opening it up to other universes. The crossover by definition means the MCU is its own universe and the Sony characters came from two separate universes.

[Neon Ignition]

Doctor Doom Could Replace Kang In MCU - Dark Horizons
I read the full story on Variety and to be honest it doesn't come across as much more than the writer inventing a narrative rather than this stuff being reliably true. The footnotes are:

With the issues surrounding Jonathan Majors, Kang might be sidelined in order to bump up Doctor Doom as the main villain of Phases 5 & 6

Mahershala Ali Almost Exited Marvel's "Blade" - Dark Horizons
That Ali almost dropped out of Blade with the film almost becoming a nightmare project due to a writers room filled with women who wanted the film to put Blade in the backseat of the story and fill it with life lessons.

Marvel Considers Original "Avengers" Return - Dark Horizons
And that Marvel are looking to save the MCU by bringing back the original killed off Avengers characters



All of which sounds very much like fan made nonsense.

[Neon Ignition]

A couple of unresolved strands I can recall post-Endgame:



-Sharon Carter being a secret weapons dealer to villains of the MCU
-Vision being revived
-Who the current Avengers are
-The Celestial corpse sticking out of the Earth
-The formation of the anti-Avengers group
-The Venom symbiote's transfer into the MCU
-The first appearance of the Mutant Gene
-Vulture being pulled into another universe

I'm sure there's lots more and that's not even counting the floating characters lying around who have been set up with no follow up.

[Neon Ignition]

TV News: Loki, Titan, DuVernay, Letterkenny - Dark Horizons
Still a hit, but Loki: Season 02 saw a 39% drop off in audience from the first season

[Neon Ignition]

Launching in full on one day unlike recent shows, likely because they will suspect the audience will be more limited for this if it's drawn out

[teddymeow]

Link don't work.

[Neon Ignition]

Fixed

[fishbowlhead]

That doesn’t look too bad.

[Neon Ignition]

"Echo" To Be The First 'Marvel Spotlight' Title - Dark Horizons
Rather than the usual Marvel banner, Echo will come under a new Marvel Spotlight banner. This will be used for projects considered to be grounded, lower budget and not requiring prior MCU knowledge

[Neon Ignition]

"Marvels" Box-Office Projections Lowered - Dark Horizons
Worrying news for The Marvels as tracking seems to be suggesting that in the run to release it's losing audience interest rather than gaining it as most movies do. It's potentially on course to open in line with the first Ant-Man movie which went on to earn $519m worldwide, a far cry from the first Captain Marvels tally of $1.131bn. However, the presales of tickets are currently matching The Flash which went on to earn $270m

[Dogg Thang]

Not sure what it’s like everywhere but, aside from the fact that the trailers really don’t sell this movie, I’ve seen almost no marketing push except for those trailers. So low tracking doesn’t remotely surprise me. It’s definitely one I’ll be waiting for on Disney+. I feel kind of bad for Larson. She deserved better.

[Neon Ignition]

The current strikes situation and wobbly trend for superhero films definitely don't help, and there's a fair amount of hindsight being 20/20 with this, but it does feel like tying it so closely to Disney+ series has been a real millstone around its neck. What marketing there has been for it really pushes the focus off Larson and onto two characters who few know or care that much about. Ms Marvel was very enjoyable but it's known that it didn't track with audiences very strongly whilst with Monica she barely had any presence in WandaVision as a superhero and not hugely in a way that stood out. Maybe if we were further in with Larson but it feels like Captain Marvel should be a Stark/Rogers/Thor etc central pillar of the MCU character - like the film should be the Winter Soldier to the first films First Avenger. This has been a year of underperforming films being better than they're made out to be so hopefully this is the same but having the movies feel like an extension of the shows feels like it comes back to confirming that the Disney+ shows are diluting the brand. The DC approach of fresh, seperate incarnations for TV might have worked better.

[Asura]

Can't help feel The Marvels is going to be the first real flop of the franchise. No-one I know is going to see it. I even asked people at work, some who have kids who watched the Ms.Marvel show if they were going to see it; half didn't know it was coming/she was in it, the other half don't seem to care.

[Neon Ignition]

I can imagine a dozen 'Death of the MCU' or 'End of the Superhero Genre' articles are already written and just waiting to hit Send on Friday morning


Going off what has been successful this year it feels like audiences want new fused with familiar. Sequels have really struggled which sounds great for new IP and yet most of the successes have been first entries but of already established IP like Mario, Barbie, Five Nights. Presumably we're going to get a flood of licenced IP films in the next five years whilst the MCU will probably reign itself back in to 2-3 films per year.

[Asura]

Going off what has been successful this year it feels like audiences want new fused with familiar.

Part of the issue though is that the Marvel movies were this, with the exception of Guardians which was a bit obscure.

I wonder if they're at a bit of an impasse now. Kinda similar to Star Wars. They're trying to get mileage out of characters who might be really big within the Marvel fandom (Moon Knight, Ms Marvel and so on), but they have very little pop culture presence outside it. The problem is that I don't know if the Marvel hardcore really like the movies, and even if they do, they're probably a pretty small % of the audience.

I've bought ~3 Marvel comics in my entire life. My main contact with Marvel, prior to the MCU, were the TV cartoons of the late 80s/early 90s (X-men, Spider-man, Iron Man), the 90s Capcom fighting games, starting with X-men COTA and up to Marvel Vs Capcom 2, the pre-MCU movie wave and finally the animated show X-men Evolution.

As a result, when Iron Man got going, I was centre-of-the-bullseye. Hence why Iron Man 2 is my go-to MCU movie even though many people dislike it. I don't know if this was by accident or design, but I think it was the latter.

I guess what I'm saying here is that I wouldn't describe myself as a Marvel fan; I just have a lot of awareness of Marvel through pop culture. But that means I have massive blind spots and limited knowledge of many areas. It leads me to things like not caring about parts of the franchise which some see as major; topics like the Skrulls.

Now obviously, the thing is, not everything is for me. I said the same about the Ms. Marvel TV show; I'm told it had a Disney Channel Movie aesthetic and was aimed at the teen girl demographic, which is great. But if Marvel's going to try and reach other markets, it needs to get a grip on what those markets want, how to reach them, and ensure they're big enough (and will come back again and again like my market has for 20+ movies).