‘Fantastic Four’ Pressure, Marvel’s Next Steps, and Kevin Feige’s Future

0:00Before we get to today's show, I'm excited to announce our next live taping of the town, which will be in Los Angeles on August 27th with me and a very special guest. We'll be at the El Rey Theater in LA and tickets go on sale today, Wednesday, July 23rd at 10 a.m. Pacific time. More information is available at theringer.com slash events. Just click the link in the description of this episode. Hope to see you there. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach, and reacts.

0:39But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not-so-great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that, bull spend. Instead, why not invest in what looks good to your CFO? LinkedIn Ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. Reach the right buyers with LinkedIn Ads. You can target by company, industry, job title, and more. So cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a$250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash the town. That's linkedin.com slash the town. Terms and conditions apply.

1:21This episode is brought to you by Boris Head. It may have been years ago, but I still remember the feeling of unpacking my kids' lunch boxes after school and find nothing left. As a parent, that's a total win. Boar's Head, maple honey ham, American cheese, maple honey turkey, all-time greats in the school lunch game. It's real quality protein that tastes great. So you can feel that winning feeling all term long. Whether you're doing wraps, sandwiches, or a quick snack box, Boar's Head makes packing school lunches easier. You'll be proud of what you pack. They'll be happy to finish it. Fuel their school day with the premium choice Boar's Head.

1:56For lunchtime inspiration, visit boarshead.com slash back to school or head to your local deli counter. It is Wednesday, July 23rd. I went to the Fantastic Four premiere on Monday night. I made producer Jesse come with me. Craig is officially barred from superhero premieres now that he openly roots for them to fail. I would never do that. I thought the movie was fine. I'll leave it to the real critics to give their reviews. It's at 80-something on Rotten Tomatoes. Pretty good. Fans will definitely like it. But what struck me about Fantastic Four from a business perspective is that it's really the first true post-pandemic, post-Hollywood correction Marvel movie.

2:34And by that, I mean it's a true standalone. You don't have to have seen the other movies or do any MCU homework to know who's who, what's happening. It doesn't have any Avengers in it. The dozens of characters that helped power Disney to box office heights that culminated in Avengers Endgame in 2019 and populated all those Disney Plus shows that Marvel says it's pulling way back on now. And it's the first Marvel Studios movie based only on the IP that Disney got in its big acquisition of Fox. Even Deadpool and Wolverine last summer had some MCU people show up. This is just the Fantastic Four. For those reasons, a lot is riding on this one.

3:09Kevin Feige, the Marvel president, maybe the most successful movie producer of all time. He did a round of media interviews this past week and he acknowledged the superhero fatigue that we've been talking about on the show and some of the changes afoot at Marvel. Fewer movies, less expensive movies, fewer and more disconnected TV shows. You don't have to see everything to get it. It's a pullback for sure and an acknowledgement that Marvel did too much. And a lot of it wasn't great. And since COVID, the box office track record has been mixed. For every Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Black Panther Wakanda Forever, there's been a failed attempt to launch a new character like Shang-Chi or Eternals or the Anthony Mackie version of Captain America, most recently Thunderbolts.

3:50Those movies have all hovered around 400 million worldwide at the box office. Not terrible, but not Marvel. So what's going on and what's the solution here? After all, Marvel is the single biggest franchise in Hollywood. If it's not firing on all cylinders, neither is Hollywood itself. So today we've got Ben Fritz here. He's a Wall Street Journal reporter covering the entertainment business. He's also a big comic book guy. He did a whole podcast on the history of Marvel Comics. And it's the Fantastic Four, the stakes for Marvel, and what's coming next. From the Ringer and Puck. I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town.

4:27All right, we are here with Ben Fritz, who's the entertainment industry reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Welcome, Ben. Nice for having me, Matt. Okay, so you covered the business for a while. We know each other. And then you left and did some editing in other areas at The Journal. And then you came back after a few years, and Hollywood has basically gone to hell while you were gone. Yeah, seriously. I thought things were a little rough in 2018, but yeah, it's not exactly a golden age I've returned to. Right. But the one bright spot in the industry has always been Marvel, or at least since the late 2000s has been Marvel.

5:06And yet over the past couple of years, we have seen that juggernaut begin to either show its age or fall into a bit of a slump. and we saw Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel, do some press this past week. He is out there talking about the new plans and, in his words, correcting some of the misconceptions out there. And my interpretation of Feige doing press is because he has to. They are in a tough spot, and there is a lot riding on both this Fantastic Four movie and, perhaps more importantly, on these two Avengers movies that are currently in production. So is that your read as well on Feige's positioning right now?

5:49It's not the Mount Olympus god that he once was. That's absolutely right. I mean, in the 2010s, Marvel could do no wrong, right? It was just hit after hit after hit. And when he stepped on stage at Comic-Con, it was like the arrival of a golden god, you know? The Beatles in a baseball cap. Yes, 100%. And then they have fallen dramatically in the 2020s. And the reason is they pumped out all these TV shows for Marvel+. There was way too much Marvel content. It was both too much for audiences to digest, and the quality control slipped. Right. So you think it is a quality issue and not just that they had such an unprecedented run leading up to Endgame that it was necessarily going to fall off the cliff?

6:35I think that's doctor number three, and that's fair. It's always going to be hard after Endgames. There was 10 years leading up to that. That was the climax, and what do you do next? Then on top of that, they pump out too much content and the average quality starts falling. I think those are the three factors that explain why Marvel's been in such a bind. And yeah, Foggy's out doing press now because they believe, they hope that Fantastic Four is the beginning of a turnaround. Yeah. From the start of the MCU in 2008 through Avengers Endgame in 2019, so that is 11 years, they made 50 hours of content total.

7:09And that is primarily the movies. after Endgame in 2019 through this movie, Fantastic Four, they've made 102 hours of entertainment, films and series. The number would go up to 127 hours if you include animation and Feige also oversees that. But that number came not from some intrepid reporter. That number came from Disney. And Disney is putting that number out there to essentially say, yeah, we get it. We screwed up. We did too much. And now we've fixed this problem. So that's why I think they have a lot riding on this movie because they claim that they have now fixed the problem. We're going to see fewer movies.

7:54We're going to see television shows that are not connected to some overall MCU narrative that you feel like you need to study up and hire a tutor to consult before you go to the multiplex and that that will be the overarching theme going forward. And the question is, is that right to do that? Is that necessary? Is it temporary until they can get back on track and then the fire hose will open up again? How should we read between the lines here? I think they're owning up to that now because they are willing to say it's part of the past, right? And it's, you know, they're, they're onto the turnaround.

8:32They're onto the cutback in production. Of course, you know everybody's coming back in production because the streaming bubble is over. Right. Yeah. The economics don't work. And Bob Iger has been talking about this for two and a half years. Yes, exactly. So there's economic pressures that are part of the story, too. But the problem and amazing thing at Marvel is everything funnels through the genius of Kevin Feige, right? So you could say that's a feature or a flaw. And certainly when the quantity starts to go up. It's a flaw. I mean, I've reported a lot on how in the early 2020s when they had all these TV shows going and the movies, I mean, people at Marvel were like hunting Feige in the hall just trying to get five minutes of his attention so he could say yes or no to all these creative decisions that they had to make.

9:15Everything goes through Kevin Feige there. He is not someone who has delegated a lot of responsibility to the people below him. They're not empowered a lot. But, you know, he's the most successful producer of the century without a doubt. So you can say that there's good reasons for it. Do you believe the narrative that we were stretched too thin? I mean, I think the audiences felt that, yes. I think audiences would say, I've spoken to a lot of fans at Comic-Cons and so on and outside the premieres. They would say, I couldn't keep track of it, so I checked out. And then when I checked out, I felt like I didn't know what was going on, so I just stopped watching.

9:47That is true for a lot of people, I think, without a doubt. Yeah. If you look at the calendar, they've got Fantastic Four, and then they don't have another movie for a year. I mean, they produce Spider-Man. So Spider-Man 4 is coming out next summer, brand new day. And then it's Avengers Doomsday next Christmas. That was supposed to be a May movie, but they bumped it to December based on some production delays. Thank you, Russo brothers. And they've got a show on Disney Plus that dropped about a month ago based on Black Panther, Ironheart, that nobody is talking about. I don't think it's made much of an impression in the fan community.

10:27It was on the shelf for over a year. And they've got this Hollywood set show called Wonder Man. Yeah, that's coming out later this year. But that is a dramatic pullback. Yes. I mean, in 2021, 2022, there was basically always a Marvel thing to watch, either on Disney Plus or in theaters. Yeah, it was an always-on proposition. And we talked about it back then. Yeah. And at times, there were movies and TV shows at the same time. You could go to the movie theater and then come back and watch some TV shows. Yeah, they thought fans just couldn't get enough of Marvel. It turns out, of course, even the hardest core fans can get enough Marvel.

11:04So now they've dramatically pulled back in part because they know fans want less, but also, you can talk to anybody internally, they will tell you the pressure on these movies has been ratcheted up dramatically. Yeah, can you do that? Can you overkill and then pull back and have it be okay? Well, only if the movies get a lot better, right? That's the answer. Like, I mean, the thing is, in the 2010s, Marvel had this momentum and people would just see every Marvel movie. And remember, not every Marvel movie in the 2010s was great. Like, there were a share of sinkers, you know, 4-2 is bad, Iron Man 2 is terrible.

11:36But people saw all of them anyway. People just kept going. And now people are really judging each movie on its own merits. They don't feel like, I've got to see it anymore. And in fact, in order to avoid this problem of all the content seeming like homework, Marvel is very much having them be more standalone. And Fantastic Four is a pretty standalone movie. Not pretty standalone. It is 100 % standalone. I was looking for cameos from various Avengers. I was leaning over to producer Jesse and ready to say, oh, who's that? Who's that? Nobody. It's all from the original comics. Right. So the good part of that is you don't have to have done your homework, right?

12:14So you can just go enjoy it. But the bad part is there's nobody who's like, well, after the last one, I got to see what happens next. in the MCU story. This movie will live or die by its own merits. Well, there's a teaser at the end. I don't want to give it away, but they do say, it's in the reviews, that the Fantastic Four will return in Avengers Doomsday. Wow, Matt, huge spoiler. No, no, no. We know that from the casting. I'm kidding. I'm joking. That's a joke. Okay, good. Of course. They did those 27 director chairs with all the names on it. Yes. And the Fantastic Four was in that. It's not a spoiler.

12:45You do not have to worry about having seen the post-credit scene to understand what's going to happen in Avengers. Don't worry. But the whole prospect of Avengers Doomsday feels very regressive and safe and frankly, boring. It feels like Feige is throwing up his hands and saying, okay, so the fans have not been into what we've been doing in phase five in the past couple of years. So you know what? We're just going to play the hits. What's Downey's number? We'll bring him back. We killed him off. Okay. we'll have him play a different character. We'll bring everybody back who could possibly come back.

13:24We'll call it Avengers. Even though we haven't had five to seven years of successful storytelling to justify the team up, we're going to do the team up anyways. We're going to call the Russos who have their pros and cons. I've been pretty anti-Russos on this podcast, but they are the credited directors on the three most successful of the team up movies. so call the Russos we'll have them do it again and we'll just play the hits and it will work and the history of Hollywood is hit and miss on that strategy you know what it reminds me a lot of Matt it reminds me of Star Wars episode 9 right the episode 7 huge hit and episode 8 comes out and if people aren't sure they like it it doesn't hold it doesn't do as well as Disney hoped okay just bring back JJ let's just go back well we'll bring back the Emperor we'll know if Thanos appears in Avengers Doomsday Yes, exactly.

14:19We'll know that they just went back to the well. But you monitor the fan community. Has that been the reaction within the fan communities? Are they just so excited, they're all pissing themselves that Downey is back? My experience with Intervene fans is just the latter. They are so excited that Downey's... They love Downey so much. What if Marvel was always just about Robert Downey Jr.? what if the 37 movies and the billion dollars that they have grossed what if it was all because of one dude you know marvel made him and now they are captive to him right when when they hired him he was a nobody right nobody wanted no well he wasn't nobody he was on the outs he was on the outs he had he had imploded right is maybe the right phrase right now they need him desperately they've built him up so much you know and i think you're right at this point they've never had as biggest success without him as they had with him.

15:12And they can't figure, it's kind of like DC was with Chris Nolan for a long time. Yeah. And even when he wasn't in a movie, you had to watch the movie because it led into the movie that he was in. And the difference in the past couple years is that none of these were leading into movies that he was in. And now they have him back. That's right. And in fact, they weren't leading into anything. Because the problem, they were more spiraling the drain as the story got worse and worse and people cared less and less. Yeah. And then at the end of Avengers 6, so Avengers Secret Wars, which is scheduled for 27 and is supposed to shoot next year, that, they say, is going to set up the future of Marvel, which will include the introduction of the X-Men.

15:57And that is the big wild card here, because since 2019, these characters from Fox have been available to Marvel Studios. And Feige has been very deliberate about doling them out. Obviously, we had a Deadpool 3, brought in Wolverine for that one. That was another Fox character. Now Fantastic Four getting a standalone. Avengers will come and be introduced in these Avengers movies. and then presumably they will get their own standalone movies. Is the Fox IP kind of the crucial key to this next phase of Marvel? Absolutely. I mean, the X-Men are arguably Marvel's most important characters alongside the Avengers.

16:43And the fact that they've never been part of the MCU means a lot to fans. And if Feige can do a really good job with them, I think it'll breed new life into the MCU. Especially this way, he doesn't have to keep digging down for C-list and D-list characters to try to make something out of them. Yeah, but the problem is, it's already been done. I mean, that's partially the problem with Fantastic Four as well, that there have been three other movies. But X-Men has been done well. The Bryan Singer movies were good, and they've done six or seven of them, and most of them are pretty good. That's right.

17:15There's a much higher bar to stand up to. This is the first decent Fantastic Four movie, I think most fans will agree, when they see it. The X-Men, they have a high bar to live up to now. But at least there's a lot of excitement for the brand. There's good feelings for the characters. So that's something for him to work with. But really, that's the future. Everything you're fantastic for, they really need it to work. And then Avengers has to work. If the next two Avengers don't work, then Marvel is beyond screwed. And what is working? Because everybody I talk to at Disney is saying, you can't judge us on the billion-dollar scale.

17:47That is over. 700 or 800 is the new billion because China is not a factor anymore because of the post-COVID cadence of people going to movies because this is now the 37th Marvel movie and you can't expect these to perform on the same level forever that if these movies get to$600 -$700 million that is a huge win even Avengers which the last Avengers grossed$2.9 billion dollars. So even half of that would be by far the biggest movie of the year. But what is success for Marvel? It's a fair question. I mean, look, Lilo and Stitch grossed a billion dollars. So it's not impossible to do still. And Disney's argument would be, look, if a movie that costs $200,$250 grows to$678, they're making a profit.

18:38And that's important. Is that enough, though? Iger used to count on three or four of these things a year to float everything else. Marvel was bringing in so much value. I mean, if the bottom line is Marvel was bringing in several billion dollars worth of grosses five, 10 years ago, and now they're bringing in less than a billion dollars total per year or something, then that's a loss. I mean, that hits Disney's bottom line. That hits the valuation of Disney and the value that Marvel brings to it. And don't forget that box office success brings streaming success, brings consumer product success, brings theme park success, etc.

19:11Yeah, we saw Josh DeMauro at the premiere. he was very quick to tell us that the Fantastic Four will soon be appearing in Disneyland, day and date, along with the movie. So you can go have your picture taken with Johnny Storm. That's wonderful. And to be a good promotion. But are people going to love the Fantastic Four enough that they want to go on a ride in five years? Right? That's really the question. They really need people to be excited about Marvel again. That's what they need most of all. I want to ask you about the casting for these upcoming Avengers and X-Men and all this stuff. Ben, I want to get your opinion, because Superman managed to do somewhat well.

19:47Well, critically, it seems like fans like the movie. I don't know financially if it'll be considered a success. Yeah, we'll talk about that. But one thing was this movie succeeded without having any major stars. I'm just curious now with Avengers, how they're going to have to cast the next slate of these movies because Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth and Robert Downey Jr., these were all major, major stars. And you could argue maybe the movies made them stars. But do you think they're going to have to try to do that again, where they're going to have to go after kind of these like mid-level people, prop them up?

20:15Or do you have to go after major stars now to make this work? I think the superhero formula all the way back to Christopher Reeve is like if the movie is working, then the character should be bigger than the star. But Robert Downey Jr. being Dr. Doom suggests the opposite. Yeah, and the fact that from everything I've heard on Avengers Doomsday, the second lead is Hemsworth. Interesting. Like he's got a major role. Isn't that admitting that they're terrified to try to build new stars. Yes, I think so. I think that Avengers is sort of a different thing. The expectations are so high for that that I think they feel they need to have these stars that everybody already knows in these roles to eventize it to that degree.

20:58But they had a choice on Fantastic Four. They could have gone after bigger names and paid more, but they went for more of these character actors, TV stars, people that are known, but not huge movie stars. and I think that was a choice because like what Ben said, they feel like if this is going to work, it's going to work regardless of whether Scarlett Johansson is in it. Yeah, but if the hunger for these movies is lowered, you have to increase the star power to make it work. Well, certainly that's what Universal thought with Jurassic World, going after Scarlett and getting her in their big franchise.

21:31But I don't know. I mean, maybe they certainly didn't do it on Thunderbolts. Those were not major stars. I also think there's a kind of anti-Marvel feeling around town and the talent community as well, where it used to be you would hold your nose and do the Marvel movie because it was an automatic billion dollar grocer and it would launch you. And now you do the Marvel movie and you don't, what's the pop you get off of it? Not as much. Right. You're doing more for Disney than they're doing for you. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. What did Brie Larson get off of Marvel's? Don't forget, Craig, the big difference with Downey is he's going to do these two Avengers movies and that's probably it.

22:12Right. So they pay him for these two and they're done. Marvel is hoping the Fantastic Four and then the X-Men, that those actors are going to be in five, six, seven movies. Right. So they don't want to be paying people 20 million dollars out of the gate. You know, they want to sign them to multi-movie deals that is not going to cost them a fortune, even for the final one. They don't want to be in the Downey situation, which is a famous story where they didn't have him signed after Iron Man and ended up having to back up the Brinks truck for every time he was ever in a Marvel movie after that. That never happened again.

22:44Right.

22:59Second, everything can change. That's why ADT security systems can monitor your home 24-7. They're backed by the most company-operated monitoring centers in the industry, so you're always supported during an emergency. When every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com to learn more. This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios, the Dog Stars, now playing in theaters and IMAX. visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott returns with a gripping post-apocalyptic thriller on a mysterious radio transmission shatters a lone pilot's isolated existence. He embarks on a dangerous journey in search of hope starring Jacob Lorty, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, and Guy Pearce.

23:43The Dog Stars now playing in theaters and IMAX. So Craig mentioned Superman. So I think we should talk about the trajectories of DC and Marvel? Because you talk to people at Disney and they're like, well, wait a second. This isn't fair. Superman is going to top out at about 600 worldwide, maybe a little more. That is the A or B level character for DC. These are Marvel characters that are not A-list. Thunderbolts, Shang-Chi, the Eternals, the Fantastic Four has been done three times already. so why are we judging Marvel on such a higher standard than DC? Well, because look at what Marvel's done.

24:30Marvel is a company, unfortunately for them, Marvel's a company that brought out the Guardians of the Galaxy with the talking raccoon and grossed$770 million in the first one. They're the one who brought out Black Panther and grossed$1.3 billion since with the first movie starring him. So they've set themselves an incredibly high bar And maybe that's unfair, but, you know, that's the problem they've created for themselves. Yeah. So if you were to bet right now on one of them, DC or Marvel, what would you bet on? I think what I would say right now is that DC, for the first time since The Dark Knight, has the momentum on its side.

25:07Even though it's not going to be hugely profitable, Superman? No, it's not. But they have the fan excitement on their side, pending. Let's see what the fans think of Fantastic Four when it comes out. Let's see if the fans love it as much as they love Superman. But the fans were very, very satisfied with Superman. Superman is not a movie that's... Not a character that's huge overseas. They're not getting great international grosses on that movie. But the core audience was really happy with that. And they are excited for what Gunn and Saffron are bringing in the DC Universe next. Currently, the fans are not very excited about the MCU, except for Downey.