Disney Waits to See If “Deadpool & Wolverine” Will Save MCU From More Layoffs

Last Monday, Marvel Entertainment in New York and Marvel Studios in Burbank, California, laid off around 15 people, including junior-level employees in production and development.

Disney purchased Marvel back in 2009. While Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted that some Disney execs were concerned about “edgy” characters hurting the Disney brand, the move to buy the comic book behemoth paid off.

According to Deadline, the layoffs were partially attributed to the efficiencies resulting from Disney’s integration of Marvel Entertainment into its larger business units.

Disney’s new cost-cutting initiative is slowly and quietly removing many Marvel films and series from circulation, as the streaming service has taken down various series, documentaries, and originals, several of which belong to Marvel.

Disney has been pumping the brakes on “Star Wars” and Marvel films and shows since Iger took back the reins after Bob Chapek began to sink the entertainment giant.

Last year, Disney reorganized its business model, which included cutting $5.5 billion in costs, $3 billion of which came from slashing content. Disney is refocusing Marvel and other branches, such as Pixar, to reduce the volume of content being produced for streaming.

With the streaming bubble burst and entertainment companies shifting focus from adding to their libraries to maximizing profits, Disney aims to draw audiences back to theaters for revenue generation.

Marvel’s entertainment giant streaming service has removed two of its original series: “Marvel’s Hero Project” from 2019 and “Marvel’s 616” from 2020. Marvel is considering removing lesser-known series.

Iger announced that he expects Disney to lower its output and refocus on quality projects rather than quantity, which may have been pushed to fill the new streaming library on Disney+.

“You get aggressive at making sure the films you’re making can be even better. Sometimes, you kill projects you don’t believe in,” Iger said, referencing the last several projects that underperformed at the box office and received a plethora of negative reviews from audiences and critics.

The MCU is in a very different place than in 2019 when it released “Avengers: Endgame.” The $2.799 billion grand finale to the Infinity Saga felt like celebrating a decade’s worth of films and fan dedication to a delicately interwoven story.

Now, dozens of series and films are dedicated to the interconnectedness of the current MCU phase, which sees a new batch of Avengers fighting the multiverse overlord, Kang the Conqueror. However, nothing seems to matter in this new phase.

Disney and Marvel know that audiences are no longer interested in the stories being told. “The Marvels” made this clear as it became the lowest-grossing installment in the history of the MCU.

“The Marvels” might have been the nail in the coffin of an ongoing problem at Marvel. Sure, there are still standouts in the franchise (“Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” and “Loki”), but these projects are not enough to keep that franchise alive.

Over the last five years, Marvel has found itself producing too many mediocre projects, all setting up for a big Thanos-like battle against Kang the Conqueror, which may have been derailed by Jonathan Majors’ firing following his assault conviction.

As part of the strategy, Marvel will be releasing one movie this year: “Deadpool and Wolverine.” The footage presentation from the upcoming ensemble X-Men film received positive feedback from audiences at CinenamCon last week.

Deadpool and X-Men were not always Disney’s property to distribute. Instead, the rights to Deadpool and X-Men belonged to 20th Century Fox (Marvel sold the rights to some characters in the early 2000s to stay afloat).

Now, the fourth-wall-breaking, R-rated superhero will be representing Disney, exciting fans as Ryan Reynolds’ anti-hero could be making his MCU debut sometime soon (Kelsey Grammer’s post-credits reprisal as the X-Men’s Beast in “The Marvels” seemed to add fuel to this fire).

With multiple “Deadpool and Wolverine” trailers already racking up millions of views online, it seems clear that the MCU has a winner in the making. The previous film, “Deadpool 2,” grossed over $786 million worldwide on a $110 million budget.

“A lot of people think it’s audience fatigue, it’s not audience fatigue. They want great films,” Iger said during an interview with CNBC last month.

Around the time Disney laid off Perlmutter, it eliminated 7,000 jobs, constituting about four percent of its global total workforce, as part of a $5.5 billion cost-cutting campaign.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Disney also dissolved a 50-person metaverse division within the Marvel branch, which had been dedicated to “next-generation storytelling and consumer experiences.”

While Marvel undergoes massive changes, both in staff and production, Disney is hoping that “Deadpool and Wolverine” could change the history of the MCU once again.