Disney Groomer-In-Chief CEO Bob Iger laughably believes the problem with his faltering Marvel franchise and doornail dead Star Wars franchise is…sequels:
Speaking at a Morgan Stanley conference in San Francisco on Thursday, Iger said Disney will be looking at reducing spending on content, and how many projects it produces.
Iger specifically wondered aloud if Marvel needs so many sequels for its superhero characters.
“What we have to look at at Marvel is not necessarily the volume of Marvel storytelling, but how many times we go back to the well on certain characters,” Iger said, according to a transcript. “Sequels typically worked well for us. Do you need a third and a fourth, for instance? Or is it time to turn to other characters?”
Oh, yes, because as the science makes clear, sequels…are…death…at…the…box…office. Forget that for 20 years, that for the last two decades, 15 times—15!—a sequel has been the top-grossing movie of the year. Last year, nine of the top ten movies were sequels. The prior year, it was seven of ten. In 2019, six of the ten top-grossers were sequels—the other four were remakes or spin-offs.
With Ant-Man 3 quickly running out of gas at a mere $400 million worldwide, I guess sequels have suddenly become the problem.
This is how silly a CEO is willing to look to avoid speaking the bare naked truth, which is this: sequels aren’t the problem; your lousy content is the problem. Rocky 9, in the form of Creed III, just cleaned up at the box office. Trust me, in a country that looks almost exactly like it did when 24 premiered in 2001 and won’t let go of shows old enough to have graduated college—NCIS, Law & Order, Simpsons, etc…—sequels, sameness, and familiarity are exactly what sells.
And let’s look at the last time the groomers at Disney attempted to introduce new Marvel characters. What we got was the woketard flop Eternals, which even included some man-on-man smooching…which is definitely new.
You want to stabilize Marvel and Star Wars, Groomer? Tell great stories with characters we can relate to, not pansexual weirdos like Little Lando Calrissian, who’s having sex with a robot.
Don’t get me wrong… Please feel free to make all the gay superhero movies you want. No one is saying movies should not be made for everyone. But man-on-man action is never going to work in the mainstream. It makes heterosexuals too uncomfortable, and we don’t go to the movies to be uncomfortable.
Stop with the lectures, the shaming, the finger-wagging, and the smugness. Sweep us up, take us away, cast the spell, and don’t break it… If you do that, everything will be fine. Instead, you keep grooming our kids, calling us racist, and making us shield our eyes; Marvel will be as doomed as Star Wars and your stock price.
Leave our children alone, you pervert. Keep your fetishes to yourself.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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