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Credit: Inside the MagicBrie Larson has doomed yet another in-development Marvel project and this time, it wasn’t even Captain Marvel.
Brie Larson has portrayed Carol Danvers, AKA Captain Marvel, since 2019, when she debuted as the cosmic superhero in the one-two punch of her self-titled movie and Avengers: Endgame.
Released at the height of the Marvel Cinematic Universe boom, her solo movie made over a billion dollars at the box office, becoming the first female-led superhero movie to do so. Combined with the titanic draw of Endgame, it appeared for a moment that Larson could potentially become the center of the MCU after the departure of Robert Downey Jr.
Things have not turned out that way, to put it mildly. Since Endgame, Marvel Studios has faced dwindling box office returns and fan backlash, with movies like Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) receiving criticism for their plotting and tepid financial returns.
Related: Captain Marvel Replacements Revealed as Brie Larson’s MCU Future Reported
Then came The Marvels, the follow-up to Brie Larson’s debut. Initially developed as Captain Marvel 2, the film (directed by Nia DaCosta) was retooled as a group effort and turned into a feature starring Larson as Carol Danvers, Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, and Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel.
Whether or not Marvel Studios will admit it openly, Captain Marvel 2 becoming The Marvels seemed like a clear indication that Larson’s status as a potential MCU champion was in doubt.
The Marvels became the worst-performing entry in the MCU to date, grossing $206 million against a nearly $275 million production budget (meaning that did not include the likely very significant marketing costs). Even by the struggling franchise’s standards, the flop was a colossal blow, making Captain Marvel 3/The Marvels 2 unlikely.
However, it seems the poor performance of the Brie Larson vehicle has also doomed another project: the much-rumored Disney+ series starring Photon, Monica Rambeau’s new superhero persona (Parris). According to scooper Daniel Richtman, the in-development Photon series has been canceled.
Related: Significant Boycott Launched Against Marvel and Disney After ‘Captain America 4’ Update
Earlier this year, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced the company’s quarterly earnings call that all branches of the company, including Lucasfilm, Pixar, and (especially) Marvel, would be cutting down on their schedule of releases, all but admitting that they had been pushing quantity over quality for years.
Iger said, “We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, or a maximum of three, and we’re working hard on what that path is.”
It appears that the prospective Monica Rambeau series has been a casualty of these cuts, which also may have axed She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Season 2, Moon Knight Season 2, and Hawkeye Season 2. At the end of The Marvels, Rambeau found herself exiled to a parallel universe and interacting with some version of the X-Men, so it is all but certain we will see her in the future, just not in her own show. Thanks, Brie Larson.
Do you think Marvel is reducing its output too much?