Disney Urgently Trying To Find New Ideas To Appeal To Gen-Z Males

August 26, 2025 Roger Palmer

One of the main reasons Disney acquired Star Wars and Marvel was to add franchises that would appeal more to boys and men, as most of the Disney franchises were generally appealing to girls and women.

The introduction of Marvel and Star Wars into the Disney saw huge growth for the company, with billion-dollar box office movie hits, massive merchandise sales and whole new areas being added to Disney Theme Parks around the world, as audiences flocked to Disney with these established franchises.

But over the last few years, both the Star Wars and Marvel franchises haven’t been hitting the same as they used to, with box office numbers dropping off for many of the recent Marvel movie releases and many of the Disney+ shows like “The Acolyte” and “Ironheart”, failing to connect with audiences.

According to Variety, Disney executives have begun looking for other franchises and ideas to lure back males aged between 13 and 28, aka Gen-Z. Disney has apparently realised that this group of males, which has been described as a lonely, gaming-obsessed group, who was hampered in their formative years by COVID-19 lockdowns.

Their sources have said that Disney is looking for a variety of different ideas involving splashy global adventures and treasure hunts, along with movies that would appeal around the Halloween season. This task has fallen on the new leader of the live-action division of Walt Disney Studios, David Greenbaum, who used to run Searchlight Pictures. One executive replied to the report, stating:

“I never thought I’d say it, but it looks like Disney is going to have to start trying.”

Disney did respond to the report, stating that making movies for Gen-Z is part of their overall strategy for all of their labels, but it is no more urgent than any other quadrant.

Roger’s Take: There’s no point in sugar coating what’s happened over the past decade with Marvel and Star Wars. As Disney tried to make these brands more mainstream by featuring a variety of different characters, it lost sight of its core audience, who have become disinterested in shows and films that feature strong female characters. The box office and streaming viewership numbers have shown that audiences are pulling away from these franchises, for a variety of reasons. I do think Superhero Fatigue is a real problem for Marvel, as they, along with other studios, have churned out so many shows and films over the past decade, flooding the market, often resulting in lacklustre products, that have pushed audiences away.

Lucasfilm followed a similar approach with the new Star Wars trilogy, focusing on Rey, as well as shows like “Ahsoka” and “The Acolyte”, which feature a strong female lead and have deterred many males from watching. We’ve seen a big cultural shift in the past couple of years, as audiences shift back to a more traditional way of thinking, which has hit Disney hard, as its projects are years in the making and trying to shift to changes in consumer habits isn’t always easy.

Disney is going to have to work hard to get Marvel and Star Wars fans back on track; it might take years to do so. They took two franchises that generally appealed to males and tried to expand that audience, which didn’t work. They’ve also been so shortsighted in just running these franchises into the ground with so many releases, that they’ve failed to invest in other new franchises that appeal to males.

While in an ideal world, Disney hoped that expanding out the Marvel and Star Wars brands to a larger audience would have resulted in them becoming more popular with everyone, they lost sight of their target audience. There’s no difference in how “Cars” appeals more to boys and the “Disney Princess” brand appeals to girls. While anyone can enjoy these franchises, the main target audience is different. Disney needs more ideas and has to start being more willing to take risks on those ideas, as the executive said, “they’ve got to start trying”.