James Gunn Clarifies Comments Claiming That Marvel Was Killed For Putting Out Too Much Content
Superman director James Gunn clarified his comments claiming that Marvel was killed by Disney executives for demanding a constant churn of content.
In a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone, interview Brian Hiatt stated, “Over at Marvel, they’ve been pretty open about the fact that they realized what’s gone wrong over the past few years. They put out too much stuff.”
Gunn replied, “And [longtime Marvel executive producer] Louis [D’Esposito] said that privately to me. I don’t even know if it’s really their fault.”
After Hiatt claimed that putting out so much content was a corporate mandate, Gunn concurred, “That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And it killed them.”
From there, Gunn shared the lessons he’s taken away from Marvel’s struggles, “We have to treat every project as if we’re lucky. We don’t have the mandate to have a certain amount of movies and TV shows every year. So we’re going to put out everything that we think is of the highest quality. We’re obviously going to do some good things and some not-so-good things, but hopefully on average everything will be as high-quality as possible. Nothing goes before there’s a screenplay that I personally am happy with.”
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Gunn has already backtracked on these comments responding to a post on Meta’s Threads.
Gunn wrote, “To be clear - & as IS clear in the context of the interview- I didn't say ‘it killed them’ like they're over but they were screwed by the situation they had no control over.”
He added, “They're on the other side of that now, which is good. The sacrifice-everything-for-streaming craze killed many good things by forcing a demand for ‘content’ that couldn't possibly be met, putting movies on TV before they had a proper theatrical run & much more. The insanity has died down & balanced out everywhere. Thank God.”
In response to another comment he also noted that Marvel was killed because the staff was overworked with the demand for new content.
He wrote, “well that is simultaneously correct because it was an impossible task.”
This claim that too much content killed Marvel is a retread of talking points that Disney issued to the press after their creatively bankrupt Star Wars trilogy saw massive diminishing returns and over the course of a decade turned the once gold mine of a franchise to ash.
Ironically, it was easy to point to Marvel, who was churning out 2-3 films a year with resounding success, to see how utterly empty the talking point was.
Too much content is not the problem. The problem is a lack of quality storytelling that has been exacerbated by Hollywood’s embrace of social justice warrior ideology.
Furthermore, if too much superhero content was a problem, why in the world would James Gunn and DC be making more superhero content?
What do you make of Gunn’s new comments?
Sounds like an excuse for losing dark money funding.
High-volume but soulless, poorly-made products.