After a troubled production and a relatively soft box-office for Solo, rumors began to emerge that the full-steam-ahead Star Wars franchise might take a quick breather. That sort of made sense, given the amount of rods they’ve got in the fire, so to speak: the J.J. Abrams-helmed flagship trilogy, the ongoing “Anthology” movies like Solo and Rogue One, an upcoming series by Game Of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, another upcoming trilogy helmed by Rian Johnson, a TV show from Jon Favreau for Disney’s upcoming streaming service, apparently some shit on Tattooine, plus lord knows whatever else might’ve been in the works. And now, in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirms that, yep, they’re pumping the breaks on a galaxy far, far away, saying:
I made the timing decision, and as I look back, I think the mistake that I made — I take the blame — was a little too much, too fast. You can expect some slowdown, but that doesn’t mean we’re not gonna make films. J.J. [Abrams] is busy making [Episode] IX. We have creative entities, including [Game of Thrones creators David] Benioff and [D.B.] Weiss, who are developing sagas of their own, which we haven’t been specific about. And we are just at the point where we’re gonna start making decisions about what comes next after J.J.’s. But I think we’re gonna be a little bit more careful about volume and timing. And the buck stops here on that.
That doesn’t mean that all of those upcoming projects are on hold, but don’t be surprised if you have to wait, say, more than a year between them, at least for awhile.
The far-ranging interview was part of the magazine’s annual THR 100 feature, which ranks the most powerful people in Hollywood, and Iger, sitting atop the rankings, touches on a variety of topics throughout, albeit with the caginess typical of a CEO. He characterizes Disney’s upcoming streaming service as “a quality play” in comparison to Netflix’s “volume play,” which is to say he doesn’t plan to pump out hundreds of original series for the platform. He holds the company line on firing Roseanne (good call) and James Gunn (bad call). And, while it’s not exactly earth-shattering news, he drops some hints on the future of the X-Men franchise, now that it’s been absorbed by Disney via their acquisition of 21st Century Fox.
How is Marvel going to absorb Fox’s X-Men franchise? Is Kevin Feige going to oversee everything?
I think it only makes sense. I want to be careful here because of what’s been communicated to the Fox folks, but I think they know. It only makes sense for Marvel to be supervised by one entity. There shouldn’t be two Marvels.
So Deadpool could become an Avenger?
Kevin’s got a lot of ideas. I’m not suggesting that’s one of them. But who knows?
Folks, Kevin’s got ideas. You can read the rest of the interview here.