When the Marvel Cinematic Universe got its start, Marvel Studios was putting out two movies per year, but that number recently increased to three per year. That’s made many fans happy but the decision wasn’t merely to try and milk more money from hungry moviegoers. As Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige recently explained, it’s got more to do with allowing them to take risks down the road.
Speaking with CinemaBlend, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige explained how the three movies per year arrangement allows the MCU to introduce new franchises without the risk of forgetting about their existing ones.
“It’s one of the reasons we’ve expanded to three films a year, is so that we could do the sequels to films that people have responded to, because we love to make continuing stories with characters people have responded to, but also keep doing the stuff that nobody’s ever heard of, and people go, ‘Why are you doing that?’ That’s fun. And that’s what Phase One was built on, Phase Two was built on, Phase Three was built on, is having that…” he said.
Feige continued “Whenever we announce the next year, two years, three years, five years, whatever we’re going to announce, there will be plenty of those that, maybe people in the know like yourself will know what they are, but the world at large will go, ‘What is it? Why are they doing that?’ That’s exciting, for sure.”
Black Panther 2 and Doctor Strange 2 are almost guaranteed at this point. Those sequels are the result of movies that were based on characters not nearly as well known to the general public. Then there’s Guardians of the Galaxy, that spawned one of the most successful franchises in the MCU. Without three movies a year, it would be more difficult to squeeze movies like those in. As is, it took four years to get Thor: Ragnarok made, as Kevin Feige points out.
“When you’ve got, what is it now, six, seven separate franchises? It’s part of the scheduling process”, he explained.
He continued “Sometimes when people ask, ‘What about this character, what about that character?’ I go, ‘Well, it’s scheduling.’ And they go, ‘What’s he talking about?’ Scheduling. How many years between movies can you have? You know, [Thor:] Ragnarok was four years. There’s four years between, right? He had an appearance in between there. So that seems to be maybe okay – sometimes, though, you want it to be less. Sometimes it can be more.”
Looking into 2019, Marvel Studios is quietly preparing for the launch of Captain Marvel on March 8th, before Avengers 4 tends to unfinished business eight weeks later.
Source: Cinema Blend
