Disney CEO Bob Iger has certainly made his presence felt since making his unexpected return to the company last year. As well as setting in motion a number of cost-cutting exercises, taking stock of many Disney owned properties that are perhaps not performing as well as they might, he has now turned his attention on Marvel Studios. There is clearly no problem with the fact that the MCU is one of the biggest cash-generators the company has a hand in, it also had a growing production cost and a planned release schedule that was almost impossible to keep up with and Iger has reportedly stepped in to rein in the franchise before things start to head south.

Comments shared by the Disney News Today have suggested the as well as wanting to focus on quality over quantity when it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iger also wants to cut down the amount of times the same superheroes are given sequels. According to the tweeted information, Iger said:

“What we have to look at in Marvel, is not necessarily the volume of Marvel storytelling, but how many times we go back to the well on certain characters. […] Sequels typically work well for us. Do you need a third and a fourth, for instance? Or is it time to turn to other characters?”

This could partly be down to the lukewarm reaction to Thor: Love and Thunder in 2022, or the lowly critical response to the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in the last few weeks, but in a way it doesn’t exactly stack up with what the last 80 years of Marvel Comics has been built on, which the constant cycle of certain well established characters.

Related: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania First Reactions Call it Marvel’s Star Wars & the Best Since Avengers: Endgame

Marvel Studios Cutting Back On Sequels May Not Be Simple to Achieve
Marvel Studios

Although Marvel Comics has an endless directory of characters that have yet to be utilized in the MCU, simply stopping using certain characters is an almost unthinkable option. While Iger’s point has been partly made in the last year, with new and relatively unknown character’s like Moon Knight and Werewolf by Night really shining in their Disney+ shows, it is hard to imagine movies under the Captain America, Doctor Strange or Spider-Man banners suddenly coming to an end.

If you look back over the history of both Marvel and DC, the same characters appear time and time again in new adventures and in slightly different iterations. Kevin Feige recently debunked the idea of Marvel fatigue being possible when there are eight decades of stories to tell with these characters, and over at DC James Gunn is in the process of rebooting their greatest heroes to kick of a ten year plan.

Although the Marvel roster of characters lining up for their next movie is almost at the point of becoming too long to sustain, movies like Secret Wars could be the chance for some of Marvel’s long-standing heroes to step out of the franchise and naturally allow others to take their place. Of course, with groups like the X-Men and Fantastic Four just about to begin their MCU journeys, that expansive character register is about to get even longer in the coming years.