AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
It was another week at the movies and another week with a familiar studio atop the box office. Marvel's "Deadpool And Wolverine" has grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide. It joins Marvel films like "Avengers: Endgame" and "Black Panther" to reach that mark. And the studio's continued success is thanks in part to one of the most consequential entertainment deals this century. Fifteen years ago this weekend, Disney bought Marvel Entertainment and ushered in a Hollywood era dominated by superheroes. But has domination become oversaturation? To discuss this, we're joined now by Joanna Robinson. She's co-author of "MCU: The Reign Of Marvel Studios." Thanks for being with us.
JOANNA ROBINSON: Oh, thanks for having me.
RASCOE: Take us back to 2009. Disney purchases Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. What were they getting back then?
ROBINSON: Yeah, I think what was interesting to know about Disney at the time is that they were at new heights with animation because they had already acquired Pixar, but they weren't reaching young men. So that's when they started to look around, past their brand of Disney princesses to action heroes, superheroes, and eventually Jedis when they pick up Lucasfilm. So this is like - their agenda was how do we get the boys and the young men to buy into Disney? And they put their eye on Marvel. And $4 billion sounds like a huge price tag, of course, but you just lined up like other Marvel movies that have already made $1 billion at least for Disney. I mean, they undervalued Marvel at the time when they, you know, spent 4 billion.
RASCOE: But some people at the time didn't look at this as a sure bet, right? They questioned whether Marvel was actually worth the investment. They didn't have some of the most recognizable characters at that time, because they were owned by others. So they kind of had these people like Thor and even Ironman. They weren't, like, the superstars of the Marvel Universe.
ROBINSON: Totally. And that's - I mean, I remember there was a Variety article, I think, that came out, the first Comic-Con that Marvel Studios goes to and talks about their plan. And they called the lineup of Captain America, Thor, Iron Man the B team, right?
RASCOE: Yeah.
ROBINSON: The benchwarmers, essentially. That's how people thought about it at the time. But by the time that Disney buys Marvel, they already proved what they could do with something like Iron Man. And so I think Disney's idea was, if they could do that on a shoestring, with a limited sort of advertising muscle behind it, what can they do with our machine behind it? What can they do with all of our promotional abilities? Which is something Disney really brought to the table, combined with hundreds upon thousands of characters that they could tap into and 100,000 stories that already existed in this world that they could mine.
RASCOE: Now, obviously, as you said, there are million characters. The MCU now has more than 30 films, more than 20 TV shows - there's an Avengers campus at Disneyland. I would love to go. But have we reached peak superhero?
ROBINSON: Yeah. It starts to feel like homework, given, like, how much is constantly coming at you, and not all of them felt sort of absolutely perfectly put together. Definitely, what happened is that when Disney decided they wanted to try to win the streaming wars - they want to go up against Netflix and Hulu and Amazon and all the other streamers. They launched Disney Plus, and their mandate is content, content, content. Give us more, more, more. And they just turned on the taps and said, give us shows. Give us movies. Let's just flood the market with our content, and that backfired on them, and they know that.
RASCOE: If I were to go see a movie today, there's a pretty good chance I'll see a preview for a comic book film. Do you see a throughline today from 2009 to the current state of cinema?
ROBINSON: It's a completely different landscape. And I think, you know, Marvel and its imitators certainly have an impact on that, where I think in order to get people in seats, you have to deliver something huge, a spectacle. "Dune: Part Two" is a huge hit coming out of this year. "Gladiator: Part Two" (ph) I think is going to be a huge hit because that promises big spectacle. So it doesn't have to be a superhero, but I think people have become conditioned partially because of Marvel to expect big special effects, big sound, you know, all of this sort of stuff to make it feel like experience. And it's unfortunate because I wish that people would want to come see any kind of story, but I think broadly to get those billion-dollar box office returns, it has to be something to match the highs of Marvel Studios.
RASCOE: That's Joanna Robinson. She's the co-author of "MCU: The Reign Of Marvel Studios." Thank you so much for your time.
ROBINSON: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
