Is Disney creating too much Marvel and Star Wars content?

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Disney is known as “The House of Mouse.”

But, in recent years, the engine behind the $269B entertainment giant has been superheroes and Jedis.

Marvel and Star Wars films under the Disney brand have pulled in ~$34B at the box office, per The Wall Street Journal.

And more is yet to come

Like your 4th serving of mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving, Disney wants to stuff your face with content:

• Star Wars has at least 16 film/TV projects in the pipeline including a new trilogy and spinoffs for popular characters like Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe recently released its 26th film (Eternals) and premiered its 5th TV series (Hawkeye) last week. There are 20+ projects planned over the next 2 years.

Disney acquired Marvel in 2009 for $4B…

… and Lucasfilm (owner of Star Wars) in 2012 for $4B. It’s recouped these investments many times over, but the quality bar may be slipping.

While Disney scored a big hit with The Mandalorian TV series in 2019, there have been notable misses.

The most recent Star Wars film — 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker — has the 2nd-worst Rotten Tomatoes score for the series, while Eternals has the worst Marvel Disney film rating ever.

This content is crucial for Disney+

Disney’s streaming service currently has 118m+ paying subscribers, with plans to hit 260m by end-2024, per WSJ.

In comparison, Netflix is projected to have ~300m (that’s a lot of people “chilling”). Unlike Disney — which has to stay somewhat family-friendly — Netflix can be more adventurous with its projects (think Squid Game).

That’s a big advantage that no amount of Spider-Man and Darth Vader can fix.