Paramount's Jim Gianopulos, Disney's Alan Horn, Warner Bros.' Tony Emmerich, Universal's Donna Langley, Sony's Tom Rothman, Amazon's Jennifer Salke and Netflix's Scott Stuber joined for the Executive Roundtable discussion.
00:00I remember when American Idol was number one for four or five years in a row, and it was getting 30 million viewers a night, and the president of NBC at the time said, we understand, but someday it will not be cool to watch American Idol anymore. I wonder if you think about that with the Marvel movies.
00:20The fast answer is no, because I think if the film has a compelling storyline, if it has heart and humor, my two things that I insist on, and it's terrifically well executed, well acted, well directed, well produced, and well written, I think there's an audience for a great story.
00:39And the audience so far has shown no fatigue with the films we're making, which are, let's say, generally classed as superhero films.
00:51But who knows?
00:52We just...
00:5323 is a long streak.
00:55It is long.
00:56Unprecedented.
00:56Yeah, it is.
00:57But Kevin Feige's working away.
00:59We have like, he'll be making three or four a year, and they're very different from one another.
01:04And so we'll see.
01:05We'll see.
01:06We don't worry about it too much.
01:07I think that going to the earlier point when we, we've done Lion King, we've done Aladdin, we have some of these other things, but we're also doing Jungle Cruise, and we're doing other films that are, that are just different.
01:19But we started to notice with Avengers, it was running out of steam.
01:23Especially the second one.
01:24Yeah, exactly.
01:25But I also think, I think the thing people don't give comic books credit for is for a giant group of us, they're our literature.
01:32They're like To Kill a Monster.
01:33They're deep character-based things.
01:35They're not To Kill a Monster.
01:36But they have a, but they have a, I'm not saying it's To Kill a Monster, but they have a historical resonance.
01:42As a former English teacher, I have to, I promise I won't say anything, but I have to say something new to Kill a Monster.
01:47But they have a depth and a resonance, and that's why you have 800 characters, and you have this thing.
01:52And Kevin, who I've known for a long time, takes them deeply seriously and understands the fan base and the nuance of those characters.
01:59So they have a resonance that people dismiss sometimes because they feel bright in those things.
02:05But there is real character, and Kevin did it incredibly well and has done a great job of narratively taking those characters through that universe.
02:13Those are an incredibly deep bench, right?
02:15So it's almost like you can't look at it like it's not American Idol, which was just one thing, one format, one concept.
02:22This is many different concepts with many different characters.
02:25I think what they've done brilliantly is the shift in tone between the different movies and the different characters.
02:31There are 6,000 characters in the MCU, and I would suggest that five years ago, six years ago, no one knew who Dr. Strange, except for the comic book aficionados, no one knew who Dr. Strange was.
02:43They don't know who Guardians of the Galaxy are, but then they're introduced.
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