Next week, Hawkeye, the fourth and final live-action Marvel Studios streaming series of 2021 will kick of it’s 5-week run on Disney Plus. During Tuesday’s press event, our own Charles Villanueva asked Marvel Studios One-Above-All, Kevin Feige, to reflect on the first year of Marvel Studios produced streaming series and what he and the studio learned that they will take into their second year and it seems that to Feige, the most important takeaway is how well they’ve all been received.
Yeah. Well, it’s the-yes, the end of year one of the-of the project’s finally, finally coming out and people being able to see them. But it’s about year three or four for us as we’ve been developing them. And I think we learn on-we learn on everything. The reception to each of them is what has been most gratifying. Because we always-we wanted them to be different here. We’re sitting talking about a fun grounded action Christmas series. Loki is this very otherworldly thing. Falcon and Winter Soldier, geopolitical. And WandaVision, ode to-to sitcoms and grief. And it feels like the audience has responded the way we wanted to.
As Feige mentioned, these projects have been in development at the studio for several years and, as we all remember, the COVID-19 pandemic took a big chunk out of each of them in their own ways; some productions were interrupted and others delayed. At one point in time, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier was supposed to kick off Phase 4 before delays moved WandaVision to the front of the queue. Nothing was made easy during Marvel Studios first foray into live-action streaming series but as Feige said, audiences have, for the most part, enjoyed the series as they explore some of the MCU’s characters on a deeper level and introduce some new characters to the mix.
As Marvel Studios moves ahead into Year 2, there have been fewer COVID-related delays and you can bet that Feige and Parliament have implemented the lessons they’ve learned over Year 1 to do a better job of the simple thing they’ve always set out to do: entertain audiences.
