Marvel Is Done Making Disney+ Shows That Feel Like Long Movies, and Its New Playbook Looks Very Different

When Marvel Studios first brought its superheroes to streaming, the pitch was simple and ambitious. Kevin Feige described the Disney+ plans at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019 as long MCU movies divided into hour-long episodes. The idea was to make television as grand and interconnected as the films.

For a while, that approach delivered plenty of excitement. But over time, fans and critics started to wonder whether the formula was working, and the studio itself seems to have reached the same conclusion.

In the early days of the streaming push, the MCU skipped the traditional showrunner model. Instead, it hired head writers who crafted each series before the shoot and directors who oversaw production once cameras rolled. Feige took over control of Marvel TV from Jeph Loeb as part of that effort, with the expansion driven by a mandate from Disney to fill its new streaming service with content.

The results were mixed. Treating the film and television arms of the MCU as one and the same produced a string of series that many fans felt were essentially movies chopped into episodes. It also wasn’t always clear who was in charge of a given show during that period, since Feige’s attention was understandably divided, which sometimes left decisions to be made in post-production.

Now a new analysis from TheWrap suggests that approach is being left behind. With the finale of ‘VisionQuest’ set to close a 5-year television experiment that began with 2021’s ‘WandaVision,’ the studio is leaning on traditional showrunners and letting its series stand more on their own. The recent critical successes ‘Agatha All Along,’ ‘Wonder Man’ and ‘VisionQuest’ all had showrunners, and the shift began around 2023.

The reason, according to a Marvel Television insider who told TheWrap, is that “chasing the movies is tough.” The insider explained that a film is a 2-hour statement, while a television show is more like an ongoing conversation with the audience, which takes more writers, more people and more give and take.

Output is a big part of the story. In 2021, the studio released 4 films and 5 series, compared with just 3 live-action series this year. Disney CEO Bob Iger previously announced that Marvel would cut back to about 2 TV series a year and reduce its film slate to between 2 and 3 movies annually, saying the goal was to focus on quality.

Brad Winderbaum, Marvel’s head of streaming, television and animation, has described the studio’s creative process as more like a traditional studio now. He has said Marvel is developing more projects than it will actually produce, and that the studio has shifted to hiring showrunners rather than relying on film executives to oversee its shows.

Another piece of the strategy is making shows easier to jump into. Winderbaum has said the characters still live in the same universe, but the interconnectivity isn’t so rigid that viewers need to watch one project to understand another. The Marvel Spotlight banner was created to highlight standalone stories that sit outside the main continuity, and ‘Wonder Man’ was confirmed as a standalone Marvel Spotlight series.

That marks a real change from the early Disney+ era, when many shows were used to directly set up upcoming films. Winderbaum has also said the pressure to fill Disney+ with new shows has lessened, which allows creatives to take a more meticulous approach and focus on getting their work right.

The timing is notable. The ‘VisionQuest’ finale arrives on November 10, and TheWrap’s analysis asks what the future of the MCU on streaming looks like after ‘Avengers: Secret Wars.’ If the studio sticks with this model, the next generation of Marvel shows could feel more like distinct television series than extended movie chapters.

That doesn’t mean the shows will be disconnected from the larger universe. Winderbaum has said big Avengers names can still make appearances, but the focus is on stories that can work for newcomers as well as longtime fans. For viewers who felt overwhelmed by homework in the past, that could be a welcome change.

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