Disney CEO Iger talks about the Marvel sequel model: new faces rather than sequels

Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke about the future of Marvel at Disney's 2023 Technology Media and Telecom Conference at Morgan Stanley on Thursday. Iger said that over the next five years, Disney will reevaluate whether certain characters need sequels, or whether they need to reappear. Marvel's upcoming films will focus on bringing in new faces rather than bringing back established characters.

"Marvel -- there are 7,000 characters, there's a lot of stories to tell," he said. "Sequels are generally very effective, but do we really need a third or a fourth, or is it time to move on to something else? New characters? As far as Marvel is concerned, there is nothing wrong with that. If you look at the trajectory of Marvel in the next five years, you will see a lot of new things. We will return to the Avengers series , but with a completely different group of Avengers than before."

The return to the "Avengers" series means "Avengers 5: Kangxi Dynasty" and "Avengers 6: Secret War", which will be launched in 2025 and 2026 respectively.

Iger's speech came at a time when Marvel's new film "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Tide" suffered a double defeat at the box office. As the third work in the series, as of the end of last Sunday, the film has received a total of 420 million US dollars in box office worldwide. From the current situation, it is unlikely to catch up with the previous two films which exceeded Gross box office results of $500 million and $600 million. At present, the score of the film on the domestic Douban platform is 6.0 points, and the score of the previous Marvel movie "Black Panther 2" is 5.4 points.