Even the biggest phenomenons come to an end. Is Kevin Feige on the wrong side of Bob Chapek as writers implicate Feige in She-Hulk messiness?
Across the vast landscape that is The Walt Disney Company, public and private sources are beginning to show that the company is, indeed, moderating ever-so-slightly towards the middle. It has been a rough year for domestic Disney productions. Whereas the parks, the ships, the merchandise, all of it has been great, the studios have not. Pixar flopped hard with its first attempt at a theatrical release in years. Lucasfilm hasn’t had a theatrical release in years and was trounced in the ratings by Stranger Things. The once juggernaut Marvel has more flops in the last two years than successes… and the successes have been mild at best. No Marvel streaming show on Disney+ has performed as well as Loki did last year, and that was with far fewer subscribers.
If you want to know why Disney’s businesses all did phenomenal except domestic Disney+ and box office numbers, look no further than the radicalization of politics for the studios.
Quietly things are beginning to change. But one area where CEO Bob Chapek has a much harder problem is with Marvel Entertainment and their big boss, Kevin Feige. Chapek and Feige have been at odds publicly in the past — it was well-known that Mr. Feige did not care in the least for the way Mr. Chapek handled the Black Widow streaming situation and subsequent lawsuit. In Chapek’s mind, Feige had pulled a Peter Rice. As much as you might push back against Chapek privately, it’s a huge no-no to do so in the public’s eye.
But surely Feige and his unrivaled track record of billion-dollar mega blockbusters is too big to fail? Think again.
Within Disney, many of the more business-minded executives are looking at the situation and beginning to wonder out loud: how much of Marvel’s success over the years came from Jon Favreau’s blueprint, from oddity successes like James Gunn, and how badly is Feige fumbling now that it’s all him?
Kevin Feige made the #DoctorStrange2 crew watch #WhatIf E4 before they started production
"[He] was like, 'You guys better watch out, cause this shit’s good'"
(via @DEADLINE) pic.twitter.com/RVYzyJIQLk
— ScreenTime (@screentime) August 18, 2022
Note that we haven’t seen any announcement out of Disney bragging about She-Hulk ratings this go-around. In the past months, Disney has been quick to release some highly-tailored spiel about how a show broke record viewership, all while hiding very specific details in the fine print that make the announcement far less exciting. But with She-Hulk, we’ve heard nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Seeing nothing on that front out of Disney makes quotes like the following a little more remarkable:
“There were so many points where I thought I have to kind of stay within the boundaries or what I imagine the boundaries were for Marvel. And he [Kevin Feige] would tell me, “No, no, no, go further. Push it further. Why don’t we try this? Why don’t we go out outside the box?’”
And:
According to Gao, she was given carte blanche essentially from the jump and told that no matter how outlandish an idea might be, chances were likely that Feige would be into it if it was a genuinely good one. More than simply liking the idea, though, Gao said Feige himself approved it and the details Bruce tells Jen about how Steve lost his virginity on a USO tour.
“These are the things that real people want answers to,” Gao said. “We want to know if Steve Rogers gets out there — if he’s out in these streets — because that man is way too attractive to have gone through life, and served his country, and not have gotten some.”
— Charles Pulliam-Moore, The Verge
If you want to know why business execs are getting cold feet when it comes to Kevin Feige, look no farther than the MCU leader being directly in charge of a show questioning Captain America’s virginity. In case you’re wonder, that doesn’t sell toys. In case you’re wondering, that doesn’t drive theme park reservations. And lest you wonder, it sure doesn’t quell the claims that Disney is obsessed with weird sex issues in programming that is at least ostensibly intended for some younger viewers to watch.
So watch out, Kevin Feige. Nobody lasts forever in Hollywood. And although you’ve done well beyond anyone else in all of the franchise businesses out there, this town is a “what have you done for me lately” kind of place. When it comes to the Phase Four Marvel releases, you’re just creating one headache after another for the big boss. And nobody is too big to fail anymore.
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