The CEOs at the top of the world’s biggest entertainment companies spoke at a Goldman Sachs conference on Wednesday, revealing plans for their geek movie franchises in the process.
Disney CEO Robert Iger told investors that he’s seen a rough cut of Star Wars: Rogue One (see “New ’Rogue One’ Trailer”), and while he said that the studio was not expecting the kind of numbers that Star Wars: The Force Awakens did ($2.1B worldwide), response to trailers and posters was showing that “the level of interest is as high as it was for Force Awakens,” according to Variety.
The company is planning for 2021 and the decade beyond with meetings at Lucasfilm and Marvel, Iger revealed. That would take both franchises beyond currently revealed plans and indicates that there’s no sign of slowing down films for both the Star Wars and Marvel franchises into the forseeable future.
Meanwhile, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes expressed satisfaction with the performance of DC movies in 2016, revealing that the films were “right on course or better” vs. plan, according to a report on his remarks by Variety. Both films did poorly with critics, though, and he acknowledged that quality could be improved. “We can do a little better on the creative,” he said, noting that “The DC Comics characters… have a little more lightness in them than maybe what you saw in those movies.”
Warners recently moved DC CCO Geoff Johns into a major role on films based on DC characters, and made other changes in management, bringing changes to Justice League, the high stakes DC analog to Marvel’s hit Avengers films (see “New DC Films Execs Make ‘Justice League’ More Inspiring”).
And 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch, whose studio had uneven performance with its superhero movies this year (Deadpool was a surprise hit and reviewer darling and X:Men Apocalypse wasn’t), was bullish on upcoming superhero films, saying that he felt “better creatively today than we have for a while,” according to Investor’s Daily.
So undeterred by some superhero underperformers this year, the pipeline of geek movies remains full, with studios making course corrections where they see opportunity to improve future releases, but committed to making the same number or more new geek releases in the coming years.