Marvel Television Likely to Focus on Animated Projects in the Future

This week has proven to be huge for Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios, as the blockbuster producer was announced to be making a Star Wars movie and also making another Spider-Man movie to wrap up the character's trilogy in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But with the production company expanding into live-action series with the launch of Disney+ comes rumblings that the future of Marvel Television might be in jeopardy. With multiple live-action series cancelled, including the series order of Ghost Rider before production could even begin, Feige might be expanding his focus while Marvel Television boss Jeph Loeb reduces his own.

A new report from Variety purports that the movie studio could take over all live-action productions moving forward, which would effectively leave the TV division with animated series in the future.

"Feige's shows are so far beyond anything Marvel TV has been able to do," said one source in Variety's report. "He has access to all of these MCU characters that the other Marvel live-action stuff just doesn't, not to mention way bigger budgets."

The report goes on to mention that Marvel Television's focus will remain on the animated projects including their group of Offenders series which include Howard the Duck, Hit-Monkey, MODOK, and Tigra & Dazzler. Those Hulu shows will be adult oriented much like the upcoming Harley Quinn series for DC Universe.

Marvel Television is still moving forward with their Helstrom live-action series on Hulu, and the third season of Runaways is on track to premiere later this year. Beyond that, the New Warriors series was officially announced to be dead while a third season for Cloak & Dagger has yet to be announced. Agents of SHIELD will wrap up with its seventh season next year.

The previous arrangement meant that Marvel Studios had access to some characters while the TV division had access to others, with some trading back-and-forth in order to ensure both brands had healthy rosters. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore, especially after the Ghost Rider cancellation.

If Marvel Studios is given the keys to the TV kingdom, focusing on making content for the Disney+ streaming service with large budgets comparable to the movies, it looks like Loeb and Marvel Television's future will remain in animation and non-scripted series, such as Marvel's Hero Project. That will effectively cut a major portion of the content created by the TV division, but there's no way that Disney will side with them over the money-printing machine that is Kevin Feige.

We'll see what Disney has planned for the future of Marvel Television as the dust begins to settle amid Feige getting even more control.