Disney says that STAR WARS and MARVEL movies will keep coming forever

It’s no surprise that Disney is trying to make the most of their investment in the Star Wars franchise they acquired a few years ago. Star Wars: The Force Awakens has already made around $1.9 Billion at the box office and that is excluding merchandising, which has potentially made much more. In other words, Disney is close to making their $4 billion purchasing price back already on the franchise after just one outing.

But they don’t want to just stop there or even with the planned future trilogy, but want to continue in investing and making movies in the franchise. We are already aware of four more Star Wars movies on the way. This year we are expecting to get the standalone Rogue One: A Star Wars story, Star Wars: Episode VIII (set for 2017), Star Wars: Episode IX (as yet, no official date, but planned for 2019) and also a Han Solo spin off (planned for 2018).

And further word has come from Disney chairman, Bob Iger that there are even more films in development, as he told Newsbeat.

“There are five Star Wars films – four more with Episode VII: The Force Awakens – that are in varying stages of development and production. There will be more after that, I don’t know how many, I don’t know how often.”

Now there is no commitment from Iger that they will be maintaining their annual release on the franchise, which is no surprise as keeping that pace in the movies is going to be quite difficult, yet something they have managed comfortably with the Marvel studios films, where there are 2-3 movies releasing every year and all of a decent quality and fitting into each other. So it certainly is possible, but that doesn’t mean it is a good thing. Star Wars is a franchise that if they ruin, they can upset a whole host of fans which can have massive negative impact on their reputation in the industry, so I doubt they will risk overdoing it too much.

However, on the Marvel side, they seem to be less risk averse and more happy to continue with the fast paced of production that they are currently following:

“Marvel, you’re dealing with thousands and thousands of characters – that will go on forever.”

“No, I don’t think [fans] are getting weary, but I think we keep raising the bar in terms of telling stories that bring them back, that excite them, that make it feel new and that is what we do for a living.

Now I tend to disagree with him. I am loving all the news coming from the new Marvel movies, but I do feel it needs to crescendo at some point or people will grow tired of the franchise, so I do hope they realise that and stagger things a bit. Their current Marvel release schedule is already quite busy and I think they would do well to slow it down and make individual movies more special or take a break and do something different rather than just think it is a license to continue printing money (and they are indeed printing a lot of it with both Marvel and Star Wars).

Marvel’s next release will be the upcoming Captain America: Civil War on May 6, 2016. Following it on the current schedule is Doctor Strange on November 4, 2016, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 on May 5, 2017, their and Sony’s Untitled Spider-Man Film on July 7, 2017, Thor: Ragnarok on November 3, 2017, Black Panther on February 16, 2018, Avengers: Infinity War – Part I on May 4, 2018, Ant-Man and The Wasp on July 6, 2018, Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, Avengers: Infinity War – Part II on May 3, 2019, and Inhumans on July 12, 2019, with three more untitled Marvel Studios films set to premiere on May 1, 2020, July 10, 2020, and November 6, 2020.

That’s a lot of films and a lot of lore and strong franchises that they need to develop carefully. Yes, there are thousands of comic book storylines for Marvel that they can still draw upon, but not every one of those storylines is as good or necessarily equates well to the big screen, so I suspect they may actually run out of stories unless they reboot certain characters or franchises to enable them to draw upon these differ storylines.

What do you think – are you excited at the news of more Stars and Marvel movies that could run on potentially forever or are you worried that it will start to become stale? Also, are there any other stories you think that still need to be told – perhaps a Jar Jar Binks spin-off? Don’t worry, meesa only kidding.

Last Updated: January 28, 2016