Even a superpowered vigilante doesn’t stand a chance in a shifting landscape of universe-crushing media titans.
Netflix announced Monday that it was canceling the last of its Marvel TV series, “The Punisher” (starring Jon Bernthal as the bent-on-justice Frank Castle) and the Peabody Award-winning “Jessica Jones” (the Krysten Ritter-starring detective show that has one season left to air).
They are the final dominoes to fall in the epic Netflix-Marvel superhero partnership launched in 2013 with “Daredevil.” The Man Without Fear series, as well as “Iron Fist,” “Luke Cage” and the team-up “Defenders,” had previously been canceled.
Those six series, which found varying degrees of critical and social-media reception, are unfortunate victims of owner Disney’s determination to play the long financial game.
Netflix has become a “$152 million behemoth,” in the words of the Hollywood Reporter, since introducing streaming in 2007. So while it might have made sense for Disney/Marvel to join forces with Netflix in 2013, Disney and other media giants — like NBCU and WarnerMedia — are now determined to build up their own streaming services big enough to challenge Netflix.
As THR aptly framed it Tuesday: “Each conglomerate is now faced with the same multimillion-dollar question: Keep their scripted originals and library content for themselves or continue to license shows — like Jessica Jones (owned by Disney), The Office (Comcast) and Friends (Warner) — to friend-turned-rival Netflix.”
Disney, under chairman Bob Iger, is far too savvy in its empire-building to continue to license valuable content to Netflix.
Consider that within the past 13 years, Disney bought Pixar for $7.4 billion (2006); purchased Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion (2009); landed Lucasfilm for $4 billion (2012); and is spending more than $70 billion to buy 21st Century Fox studios and other businesses.
Given such staggering libraries of content, a massive global footprint, mighty merchandising power and lucrative superhero, sci-fi and animated universes, Disney would certainly be foolish not to go all-in with its own entertainment streaming service.
