Marvel is changing how many MCU movies & TV shows we get each year

If you’re an MCU fan, we have some bad news: Marvel is paring back its movie and TV show output, as confirmed by Disney CEO Bob Iger.

Once upon a time, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a novelty. After all, The Avengers was the only movie from the franchise released in 2012 — but things ramped up as it became a pop culture titan.

Nine films were released between 2017-2019 (three per year), and Kevin Feige stepped it up a notch with the launch of Disney Plus, with a whopping 22 projects released since 2021 (10 movies and 12 TV shows).

Well, on Disney’s recent Q2 earnings call, Iger revealed the company’s strategy is moving away from “a desire in the past to increase volume.”

“I’ve been working hard with the studio to reduce output and focus more on quality, that’s particularly true with Marvel,” he added.

“We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four, and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two or at the maximum three.

“And we’re working hard on what that path is, we’ve got a couple of good films in ’25 and then we’re heading to [Avengers 5 and Avengers: Secret Wars], which we’re extremely excited about.

“Overall I feel great about the slate, it’s something that I’ve committed to spending more and more time on, the team is one that I have tremendous confidence in and the IP that we’re mining, including all the sequels that we’re doing is second to none.”

This comes after a historically bad year for the MCU in 2023: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania underperformed, Secret Invasion was widely received as the worst TV show in the franchise to date, and The Marvels became its biggest flop ever. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 and Loki Season 2 were the exceptions.

The MCU will return to the big screen with Deadpool & Wolverine. You can also check out our breakdown of the Marvel and Avengers movies in order.