Following the massive success of the “Guardians Of The Galaxy” trilogy, James Gunn moved over to Warner Bros. Discovery to co-run the movie and television division of DC Comics.

During a recent interview with James Gunn to promote his upcoming “Superman” movie, he was asked about how Marvel has been open about how they made a mistake in putting out too much stuff, with Gunn replied:

And [longtime Marvel executive producer] Louis [D’Esposito] said that privately to me. I don’t even know if it’s really their fault.

When asked if this was due to a corporate mandate from the higher-ups at Disney, James added:

That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And it killed them.

With the return of Bob Iger as CEO in late 2022, it was very noticeable that things started to change, with hardly any new announcements of new Marvel projects and a general concept of taking what had been announced, delay releases to spread them out further, resulting in a reduction of superhero fatigue, but also allowing the creatives more time to get them better, while also saving Disney cash.

DC also had a similar problem as Marvel Studios, with lots of different shows and films being released, but with far less structure, resulting in “Superman” acting as a complete reboot of the DC Comics cinematice universe, James Gunn was also asked if he has learned anything from the mistakes from the failure of Marvel.

There’s no doubt. We have to treat every project as if we’re lucky. We don’t have the mandate to have a certain amount of movies and TV shows every year. So we’re going to put out everything that we think is of the highest quality. We’re obviously going to do some good things and some not-so-good things, but hopefully on average everything will be as high-quality as possible. Nothing goes before there’s a screenplay that I personally am happy with.

There is little doubt that the pressure from Disney executives to flood Disney+ with a vast amount of content has harmed Marvel Studios. Both streaming viewership and Box Office numbers are down as a result of the oversaturation of content and a general decline in quality, causing audiences to become less interested. DC made many of the same mistakes that Marvel did, but Marvel Studios had much more success in the early days prior to the launch of Disney+.

Moving forward, we’ve seen Marvel drastically cut back on the number of shows and films it releases each year, with many projects being delayed. The next show to be released on Disney+, “Ironheart” was initially supposed to be released on Disney+ two years ago, but was delayed to spread out what they had left and 2025 seems to be the year that most of the previously announced projects hit out screens.

From 2026, we can expect to see far fewer Marvel projects released. However, there is also a lot of pressure on the upcoming DC releases, as that brand faces many of the same challenges as Marvel. Superhero fatigue is a problem for every studio, and if they all increase the quality and reduce the quantity, maybe we can have a new golden age of superhero content in the years ahead.

Do you agree with James Gunn’s thoughts? Let me know on social media!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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