Not that long ago, in a white-walled office space not-so-far away, George Lucas signed away Lucasfilm to Disney. Three years earlier, in 2009, a similar pen stroke had transferred control of Marvel Studios to the Burbank-based entertainment giant.
Under Disney’s guidance, both Star Wars and Marvel grew massively. Now, that expansion appears to be slowing as the studio curtails each brand’s annual output.
Both franchises were box office behemoths during the 2010s. The five Star Wars films produced by Disney have grossed nearly $6 billion worldwide, while the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has become the largest franchise in box office history, grossing nearly $32 billion across 35 films. Then, everything changed.
As Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker brought both properties to their respective culminations, questions arose about what the future of the franchises would look like. In Nov. 2019, the answer arrived in the form of Disney+, the newest player in the emerging streaming wars.
Just months after the platform launched, Hollywood shut down as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe. When Lucasfilm and Marvel emerged from the crisis, their brands had been radically transformed from titans of the silver screen to the newest players in high-budget, prestige television.
Disney+ brought about an explosion of Star Wars and Marvel entertainment. After a brief pandemic-era hiatus, Marvel Studios unleashed over 35 hours of content in 2021, primarily due to its aggressive entry into the television space. Lucasfilm had been regularly producing television since 2008, but WandaVision marked Marvel Studios first official small screen product.
Until 2019, Marvel Television had operated separately from Marvel Studios as a subsidiary of the now-defunct Marvel Entertainment, LLC, producing shows like Netflix’s Daredevil and The Defenders, as well as ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. When the television division folded into Marvel Studios under Chief Creative Office Kevin Fiege, the company pumped out five shows within the MCU continuity in its first year alone.
By 2023, Star Wars had grown to a similar size, delivering 30 hours of television-only content. Since the Skywalker Saga concluded in 2019, Lucasfilm hasn’t produced any theatrical content. Its next film, The Mandalorian & Grogu, a spinoff of the popular Disney+ series, will arrive May 22, 2026.
Television made up about half of content minutes released in 2019 between the two franchises. Two years later, that number had jumped to almost 80%. In 2024, it was nearly 95%.
Despite television’s growth, overall franchise output between Marvel and Star Wars fell about 25% in 2024, hitting the lowest amount of content minutes released since the launch of Disney+ and the pandemic-era shutdowns – a reflection of Disney CEO Bob Iger’s vision for the studio’s largest IPs.
Last May, Variety reported that Iger admitted the studio had “invested too much” in the streaming business during the early years of Disney+. “It resulted in volume, not quality,” that lost the company billions, Iger said.
That immense volume of content has cost the Burbank studio billions of dollars to produce. Two seasons of Andor – just 24 total episodes – carried a production budget of $645 million. The single season of The Acolyte cost $230 million, an eye-popping $28.7 million budget per episode.
Marvel has faced difficulties earning renewals on its most expensive products. The $225 million-budgeted She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and the $148 million-budgeted Moon Knight both failed to see second seasons.
For both brands, animation has been a bright spot, with What If…? earning the distinction of Marvel Studios’ longest-running television series and Star Wars notching 16 seasons across The Clone Wars, Rebels, Resistance and The Bad Batch.
Reflecting Iger’s desire to reign in spending on Disney’s key franchises, Marvel Television cut costs in 2024; both Agatha All Along and Echo were made for $40 million or less. Next year’s The Mandalorian & Grogu will cost just $166 million, making it the cheapest Star Wars film since 2005 with a fraction of The Force Awakens’ $533 million budget – the largest in film history.