It’s not the only reason behind the DCEU‘s disastrous final year, but the superhero shared universe suffering three colossal box office flops this year alone through Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash, and Blue Beetle can be at least partially attributed to Warner Bros. announcing the entire franchise was being rebooted.
As a result, none of its remaining movies mattered at all in the grand scheme of things, with many audience members justifiably deciding that there was no point spending money on a ticket to see a blockbuster that’s already been pre-ordained as utterly irrelevant by the people who footed the bill.
With that in mind, a bombshell claim being made regarding the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe realistically has the potential to do the same sort of damage to Kevin Feige’s sandbox, especially when the Multiverse Saga is already struggling as it is, and won’t end for another four years until Avengers: Secret Wars comes to theaters.
According to Joanna Robinson, the author of MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, Feige is doing what a lot of people thought he would do by treating the sixth Avengers epic as his chance to hit the reset button.
“We have a quote from Kevin Feige sort of implying… that like Secret Wars will serve as a soft reboot in which they can prune everything. That’s not to use a Loki-ism. Prune everything that’s not working and just keep what is [working], or bring back people you thought were gone forever.”
We saw what happened to the DCEU when plans to start over went public, and with Phase Five struggling to keep even longtime fans invested, it can’t be ruled out that the MCU might just suffer a similar fate, not ideal considering those alarming box office projections for The Marvels.