Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Vet Side-Eyes Disney CEO’s Slighting of Past Marvel Series
Clark Gregg, the onetime front man for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — sorry, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — had to raise an eyebrow at a perceived slighting of the first contemporary live-action Marvel series.
In post-morteming the underperformance of recent IP-driven films, Disney CEO Bob Iger said this week at the annual Sun Valley Conference, “In our zeal to basically grow our content significantly to serve mostly our streaming offerings, we ended up taxing our people way beyond — in terms of their time and their focus — where they had been.
“Marvel’s a great example of that,” Iger continued. “They had not been in the TV business at any significant level.” (Emphasis ours.) “Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series, and frankly, it diluted focus and attention.”
Gregg, a veteran of ABC’s S.H.I.E.L.D. (and currently a recurring player on Hulu’s How I Met Your Father), quote-tweeted a summary of Iger’s drive-by diss, adding a simple but felt, “Bro…”
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was born of the first Avengers movie and was directly impacted by Captain America: The Winter Soldier, yet proceeded to be largely “MCU-adjacent” (as it was produced by the now-defunct Marvel TV shingle, not Marvel Studios itself). And it is far from the only Marvel TV production to precede the Disney+ slate that began with WandaVision and most recently added Secret Invasion.
A year-and-a-half after S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s well-watched September 2013 debut, ABC had Marvel TV’s Marvel’s Agent Carter reporting for duty in January 2015. Netflix then joined the mix with its Marvel TV-produced rollout of Daredevil (April 2015), Jessica Jones (November 2015), Luke Cage (September 2016), Iron Fist (March 2017), the team-up mini The Defenders (August 2017) and The Punisher (November 2017).
Other productions include FX’s Legion (February 2017), ABC’s Marvel’s Inhumans (September 2017), Fox’s The Gifted (October 2017), Hulu’s Marvel’s Runaways (November 2017), Freeform’s Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger (June 2018) and Hulu’s Helstrom (October 2020). And that’s just to name just the live-action MCU-era fare produced by Marvel TV.
All told, that’s 34 seasons of Marvel TV-produced shows that preceded WandaVision‘s January 2021 launch of Disney+’s Marvel Studios-produced, canonical projects.
Which seems significant.
It’s weird because they made a big deal of Agents of Shield being influenced by the Marvel movie universe at the time. The Coulson thing alone as he was supposed to be dead but actually wasn’t is something. I also think sidelining the series after everything is said and done is disrespectful to all involved. The show mattered at the time to Marvels movie universe even if they won’t acknowledge now.
And now, everybody wants Maria Hill to be taken to T.A.H.I.T.I., too. Such a wonderful place — that wouldn’t have happened without a TV series.
The problem is not the shows, but that they hijacked the marvel movies from the market outside of Disneyplus. Before their streaming, people all over the world were looking in anticipation for the next movie, and watching everything available on broadcast tv, cable and several streaming services at the same time. But now, you’re stuck with a reduced audiece who chose to keep this one streaming and not everyone in that reduced audicence is even watching the same movies at the same time. It’s the worst advertising campaign and it’s damaging ticket sales in the long run.
You’re missing both The Gifted and Runaways. So yes, we’ve had a lot of Marvel TV for a long time. And not one of those shows is the reason the new Indiana Jones movie is not a good movie. It’s performing at the box office exactly as it should for a movie with so many plot holes and really cheesy writing.
The one similarity they have is catch-up. The Indiana Jones movies are not recent. I did not have time to go watch the old ones prior to this release and wanted to, so skipped it this busy summer. I think some people do the same with Marvel stuff…. get behind so hold off until they can catch up with how interconnected it all is.
Kevin Feigi and Marvel Studios did not oversee the new Indiana Jones. But, Marvel Studios, whose first TV series was Wandavision, went from making three films a year to three films + four series. Several reports said the VFX artists couldn’t keep up, many projects needed last minute rewrites and re-shoots and the sheer volume hurt quality. These are not standalone projects, like a TV network output. They need an unified team to maintain cohesion and they were pressured to delivered more than they could to keep quality control. People act like what Iger said was so difficult to understand. It is not. There were more projects than a team overseeing a single universe could keep up with.
And I dvred gifted every week and was looking forward to season 3 as how it ended we know what season 3 would’ve been about as outside of dark phenoix days of future past has always been inbcorrosrted into x-men shows or movies
You left off Runaways, The Gifted, Legion, Cloak and Dagger, and Helstrom but most of all, there are over 55 years of Marvel animated series. From 1966’s The Marvel Superheroes and ‘67 Spider-Man all the way to Avengers Assemble, Guardians of the Galaxy, 2017 Spider-Man, Hit Monkey, and MODOK and so much inbetween. Heck Spidey and His Amazing Friends didn’t start at Marvel Studios. Iger’s comments were tone-deaf as hell
Iger clearly was referencing modern, MCU-era Marvel series. But yes, I will add the first five you mentioned.
The comment as I had heard it made it seem like he was saying Marvel had no TV footprint before WandaVision, dismissing animation just as much as live action. And every animated show from Iron Man: Armored Adventures, Wolverine and the X-Men and Spectacular Spider-Man onward would count as MCU-era series.
Genially agree to disagree!
While I think that every live-action show since Agents of SHIELD should be included, all the animated series *except* What If? should not. Because they aren’t part of the MCU and weren’t done in conjunction with either Kevin Feige or the various showrunners of Agents of SHIELD, the Netflix shows, or the Hulu shows (especially Runaways and Cloak & Dagger). They’re just straight-up non-canon.
Crappy writing is messing with the Marvel brand. It’s not more complicated than that. They were more successful before because their product was better.
Too many productions affects quality control as well. Obviously the writing would be better if they had more time and human resources available to vet more drafts through a longer preproduction.
I honestly think he’s talking about Marvel Studios as a production entity. They produced separately from Marvel TV which was under ABC TV until recently.
Yes, that’s completely what he means. People are not understanding that he’s talking from the production angle, not an IP angle.
Iger is referring to Marvel FILMS (led by Kevin Feige) had not done any significant work in tv – which is 100% true – the only Marvel show before Wanda Vision that Marvel Films/ Feige was involved with was Agent Carter
ALL pre-Wandavision Marvel shows – were made by the now-defunct Marvel TV (or whatever it was called) and led by Jeph Loeb – and thus Feige (and the film producers) were not distracted by the making of all those shows
Yes. That’s the point. The slight against the TV shows is ridiculous, especially given how badly Thor: Love & Thunder and Quantumania turned out because neither one had adult supervision. Iger seems to be out of touch with the TV shows or he’d know how good they are, how much they *mainted* the MCU’s focus while two of the highest-profile movies fumbled it, and thus, he would have never made these remarks.
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The mere existence of this many TV shows isn’t the problem, especially since they’re all at least good to varying degrees (and Loki, WandaVision, Ms. Marvel, and Moon Knight are all brilliant. YMMV.), it’s two very bad movies and a compromised movie (Doctor Strange 2, which, while good, crapped on WandaVision) that diluted the focus. For whatever reason, Feige dropped the ball on these three movies and the shows should not be paying for it.
The problem isn’t just quantity, the problem is quality. I watched the older non-MCU Marvel TV shows AND went to the theatre because the stories were good! Not so much anymore.
AOS is better than any of the assembly line MCU series they’ve churned out thus far IMO.
I liked Moon Knight though, even if I preferred him to debut in the MCU in his own film.
I don’t think people understand that there were two sides of marvel. All the tv stuff before WandaVision was under a different division and either very loosely connected to the MCU or not connected at all.
I think people get that just fine. It’s just stupid that execs act as if Marvel TV series never existed and never really acknowledge these shows at all. It’s insulting to just disregard the crew and actors who worked on these shows any time they want to pretend that their shows are the first of their kind in regards to a marvel TV series. No is saying they need to sing their praises every chance they get, but to basically pretend they never happened is annoying, hence Gregg’s response.
What he is saying is Iger is is talking about Marvel Studios, which until WandaVision only made films. Agents of Shield was made by Marvel Television, a different subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment (the Parent Company until Marvel Studios took over) and was headed by Jeph Loeb instead of Kevin Feige.
Iger didn’t forget of about Agent of Shields and the other MS series, he simply said NS didn’t made TV series until recently.
As commenters are noting here, there have been a lot of Marvel shows in the past decade, many coinciding with the most successful MCU films. But Marvel did decide in the last few years to make some of the films (the second Dr. Strange, The Marvels, etc.) directly tie into the shows, which some viewers don’t like. But that doesn’t mean they need to stop making shows – just don’t make them required viewing for the movies!
I agree. It reminds me of how the comics would have these massive crossover events that required you to buy titles that you didn’t normally read.
AoS was IMO pretty good, better than most of the current MCU TV shows. The Marvel Studios productions haven’t even got close to the level of Daredevil or Jessica Jones S1 though IMO, largely because of both shows having compelling villains with good actors playing them. See also Luke Cage S1 and the difference between the first half with Mahershala Ali and the second half without him.
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Hawkeye was (IMO again) one of the better offerings, but having an Avenger fighting a group called the “Tracksuit Mafia” was awful writing.
Tracksuit Mafia is from the comics.
The Tracksuit Mafia is taken directly from the Matt Fraction/Daniel Aja run of the comics, which were hilarious and which the show captures quite nicely, IMO.
oversaturation is a thing, but I don’t think they’re doing a particularly great job in the “new phases” since End Game. part of that may be an effect of the pandemic, but I’m not sure. true comic book junkies don’t make up the majority of mass audiences. the people who really watched and got invested with Marvel films back in the mid 00s and early 10s are in another phase of life now. I don’t have kids, but as a 30 something with a lot less free time than I had when I was in my teens and early twenties, it’s hard to get invested in the build up of these new ‘phases.’ with Infinity War and End Game, it felt like I was seeing something through to the end, and the only TV shows I’ve been invested in were ones like WandaVision where the characters were part of that original run. I’ve seen a couple of the new films and the new shows – they’re all right, but haven’t grabbed me in the same way they did when I was younger (and honestly, I thought the TV series were better than the films for the most part. The Eternals was so dull and had a stacked cast.) maybe a large portion of the original audience has grown out of it and they need to find a new audience? possible, but it’s not necessarily a quick process.
I think there’s a flip side to this coin though. You’re older and strapped for time and they’re no longer a priority. But for me and the people I know, that’s where we were when these movies started out. My husband and I had date nights for some of the bigger entries. As our kids got older, they started watching the movies with us. And now we watch the series at dinner as they roll out with the teen and the tween. Some of us are actually more invested now.
that’s true and a good point. you could be more part of the new audience, maybe? more reasons to be/get invested.
I fully understand Clark´s short but pointed “bro…”
AoS was a trailblazer with awsome actors and mostly fine scripts.
Marvel just abandoned this project for no reason.
I daresay “Eternals” and “Ant-Man 3” did more to dilute the MCU than any of the Disney+ series did.
I absolutely loved the Agents of Shield tv,wished for more
I think Iger was clearly referencing the Disney + Marvel shows starting with WandaVision.
The rating numbers mentioned in the linked article above from 2013 are stupefying
Thank you, Matt. They’ve tried so hard to erase the series that came before. I will never forget Kevin Feige introducing Mahershala Ali as Blade, but somehow just “forgetting” he’d previously appeared in Luke Cage as Cornell Stokes. You got caught up in the Coulson issues on Twitter. I’m sorry for that day and being one to the Twitter crazies. But I won’t forget what they did to Coulson. We didn’t fight to bring him back to end up with another death, an evil twin and the LMD. But it was obviously things weren’t good between the divisions when those choices were being made. It felt like the end of that era was coming.
I’ve always felt that they royally snubbed Clark Gregg by not showing him in the end credits of Endgame.
They showed others who were in less movies and not in Infinity war or Endgame
He was in Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Captain Marvel, The Avengers, and Thor.
He was in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.for 7 season and it played in the same universe as the movies and included cameos. It even tied in with Infinity War.
Jeanne, they snubbed Clark in so many ways. He was the constant cheerleader for Marvel projects. His energy was appreciated by fans. That no one outside of Jeph Loeb’s division tried to save Coulson at Season 5 pretty much said it all. And I think the people who worked for Marvel TV at that point were so burnt out that they started making decisions that were hard to back out of creatively. If a few executives had stepped in, I’m sure we would have an older, but still bada$$Agent Coulson. But by then, they had other actors playing similar roles in the MCU. So they thought they were interchangeable. They’re not. There’s only one Agent Coulson. And he’s played by Clark Gregg.
AoS is not part of the MCU timelime.
His quotes (on Marvel and Pixar) lack so much nuance and deeper insight. They scream of a corporate figurehead so out of touch and concerned with the bottom line. Needing a quick, surface level scapegoat to blame
Agents of SHIELD was – and IS – a great show and a solid addition to the franchise.
Agents of Shield is by far the Best Marvel T.V. show there was. Because they made it 7 seasons without gratuitous sexual situations, over the top violence blood and gore, and they had solid enough writing to live parallel to the M.C.U with every season and nods to every movie that was out from Captain America (Super Soldiers)-Infinity War/End Game (Time Travel plots) and even up til now with the Kree/ Inhuman plot points seemingly running adjacent to the Skrull/ Secret Invasion/ Mutant plots currently running. Agents of Shield have several vertebrae in the Spine that is the M.C.U. That is all
And Many of those shows were far better than latest installments on Disney+.
Quiting agent Coulson… “bro…”
They obviously meant Marvel Studios specifically. Those other shows were produced by other networks where Marvel Studios did not have creative control.
Nah i agree with Iger. Those early Marvel TV productions were terrible compared to Marvel Studios output. It may have been ok for those used to broadcast television shows but the quality of the writing and acting was so far behind what the MCU was doing that they were unwatchable to anyone not already used to weekly broadcast TV content. And the only watchable product from Netflix was Daredevil.