‘Quantity over Quality’ Mandate: Marvel Exec Reveals the Reason of Countless Low-Effort Shows

written by Dean Black

March 18, 2024 2:00 pm

‘Quantity over Quality’ Mandate: Marvel Exec Reveals the Reason of Countless Low-Effort Shows — Image credit: Disney+

If you couldn’t understand the surgance in low-quality Marvel series, here’s the answer: apparently, there was a literal “quantity over quality” mandate.

Summary:

In 2019, the new streaming platform Disney Plus was launched, and it needed content.

Marvel had an internal mandate to create as many TV shows for Disney Plus as possible.

This led to a serious decrease in the studio’s credibility and the “superhero fatigue” phenomenon.

Funny things are now being revealed, folks! It’s not that we didn’t know that it was Marvel itself that induced the so-called superhero fatigue that it’s now suffering from… But hearing the direct confirmation of that from one of the Marvel executives is a bit more than just amusing. Here’s the story behind the…questionable MCU shows of the past few years.

Marvel Assaulted Fans with Endless Content

The 2010s were largely the golden age of Marvel, and specifically, the MCU: with great high-budget movies raking up billions and more superhero fans than ever, their business was flourishing. Things took a deep dive by the end of the decade though, and we first heard the term “superhero fatigue” just a few years ago.

‘Quantity over Quality’ Mandate: Marvel Exec Reveals the Reason of Countless Low-Effort Shows - image 1

At one point, the MCU began pumping out ridiculous quantities of content no one had asked for: movies about minor superheroes most fans haven’t even heard about and TV shows that made no sense even for avid Marvel fans. The decline began, but for some time, it remained unobvious; in the 2020s, it really started showing.

And there was only one goofy reason for all that to happen.

Marvel Wanted to Overpopulate Disney Plus

‘Quantity over Quality’ Mandate: Marvel Exec Reveals the Reason of Countless Low-Effort Shows - image 2

The “quantity over quality” thing started around 2019, and believe it or not, it was a genuine policy over at Marvel. The thing is that in 2019, Disney Plus was created — and as a new streaming platform, it had to be populated with content. Any content.

“Frankly, in all honesty, there was a mandate to kind of create as much as we could for Disney Plus, as quickly as we could,” Marvel’s Head of Streaming Brad Winderbaum explained to Phase Zero.

There was no time to plan and think things through: Disney Plus needed to be filled with original TV shows to become competitive, and Marvel took it upon itself. The barrage of low-quality series was deemed necessary for the platform’s survival, but while Disney Plus is still around and doing reasonably well, it’s the MCU that needs saving now.

Source: Phase Zero via YouTube