With all the excitement over yesterday’s announcement that Marvel would be bringing four new series to Netflix based around Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Jessica Jones, comments made on an earnings conference call yesterday may add more speculation to what’s already been revealed.
Jay Rasulo, Senior Executive VP and CFO of the The Walt Disney Company, said the following on the call:
Marvel has thousands of characters…and it is not possible to mine them all with filmed entertainment. While these characters are attractive characters they are not among the most popular… it’s not likely we would have made feature films about them…though if they are popular on Netflix, they could become feature films.
While it’s vague enough to suggest that it’s nothing more than speculation, the possibility of a Defenders feature film seems to be the most likely outcome of what he mentioned.
In a separate interview with Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger, he buried an interesting piece of info in a question about why Disney chose Netflix over its own in-house streaming service Hulu:
We actually talked about making these series available to others. And there was quite a bit of interest for these properties in the marketplace. The answer is yes, we will as a company, create more original programming for platforms that are not ours. We have some great networks with ABC, ABC Family, The Disney Channel, not to mention ESPN and Life but they’re not going to buy original, scripted programming for a while. But we can sell just so much programming from Marvel, we’ve got a good show in S.H.I.E.L.D. and another one being developed for ABC- more plans on our Disney channel with Marvel, but this seemed to be a great opportunity and I think there will be other opportunities on other platforms to do some more things.
Could this be the rumored Agent Carter series that was teased in the Marvel One-Shot included on the Iron Man 3 Blu-Ray? Only time will tell, but for now, let the prognosticating begin.
What do you think the studio has in store for us? Let us know in the comments section below.