Sony CEO Comments on Marvel’s Decline & Kevin Feige’s MCU Plan

Tom Rothman, the CEO of Sony Pictures, recently addressed Marvel Studios‘ recent struggles. In an interview, he expressed admiration for Kevin Feige while also discussing what went wrong with the MCU over the past few years.

Tom Rothman on why you should never bet against Kevin Feige

Rothman recently joined Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw and The Town’s Matt Belloni at the American Film Institute for a conversation on the Spider-Man film franchise’s future, and the movie industry’s current biggest crisis, among other topics.

During the discussion, Shaw asked the Fox Searchlight Pictures founder what he believed was the reason for Marvel’s recent decline. Indirectly referring to the oversaturation of Marvel content — the release of multiple live-action films and Disney+ series in a year — Rothman stressed that “scarcity” was crucial to keeping audiences invested — even noting that Kevin Feige would agree with him on this.

“You got to make the audience miss you,” the Sony CEO added. “You know, it’s the old thing… Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

However, Rothman expressed his full faith in Feige’s work. He even named him one of two people whom no one should “bet against.” The other is Avatar director James Cameron. “He knows what he’s doing, certainly they’ve engaged you can see it in a course correction, less television,” he further stated. “I think it was really the television and the elaborateness of that interconnection that made you have to be so inside, you know, or else you felt excluded.”

Rothman stressed that Feige wasn’t to blame for Marvel’s previous content release strategy: an overwhelming amount of Disney+ TV shows and films in a year, attributing it to the “mandate” given to him by Disney’s administration under Bob Chapek.

“And he’s a good corporate soldier. So he did what he was asked to do,” Rothman elaborated. He then pointed to Marvel having scaled back on its content output in recent years, saying, “But I think he knows very well that now to a degree less will be more and it’ll be very more. Have no worries for Avengers [Doomsday], guys.”

Source: Comingsoon.net