Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted Wednesday that the company has released "too many" sequels recently, adding that the company should only make them if there is "a reason" to make a sequel.
Iger's statement comes shortly after The Marvels, the latest Marvel movie and a sequel to 2019's Captain Marvel, has flopped at the box office, earning only $187 million worldwide since its opening on Nov. 10. The movie was filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Iger explained, meaning that “there wasn’t as much supervision on the set."
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“I don’t want to apologize for making sequels,” Iger said at the New York Times’s DealBook Summit. “Some of them have done extraordinarily well and they’ve been good films, too. I think you there has to be a reason to make them, you have to have a good story. And often the story doesn’t hold up to is not as strong as the original story. That can be a problem.”
The Marvels is one of multiple box office disappointments that the House of Mouse has endured in 2023, half of which are sequels. It comes after the Walt Disney Company was once making money through nearly every movie it released, with seven out of the 10 highest-grossing movies of 2019 being from Disney.
Going forward, Iger said that the company is only going to make sequels if the company believes "the story that the creators want to tell is worth telling.”
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The year 2023 has been a rough one for Disney, as most of its movies have either underperformed, such as Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Little Mermaid remake, or have outright bombed at the box office, including The Marvels, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Haunted Mansion. Most recently, Disney's animated film Wish opened to a disappointing $31.7 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend, with original projections having the film opening somewhere between $40 million to $50 million.
Next year, the company is cutting back on its output of sequels and Marvel content, with Deadpool 3 being the only Marvel movie that Disney is releasing in 2024. Inside Out 2 and Mufasa: The Lion King, a prequel to the 2019 The Lion King remake, are also releasing next year.