What Hulu Reorganization Means for Marvel Studios Shows

Friday afternoon, Disney announced Randy Freer is stepping down as chief executive officer of Hulu. In further reorganizational shuffling, the entire Hulu leadership team will now report directly to Kevin Mayer, the head of Disney's direct-to-consumer offerings. That means Mayer is now directly responsible for both Hulu and Disney+, two of the top original content providers in the world of SVOD.

Beings that we're ComicBook.com and all, we have to ask the question — what's this reorganizational shift mean for the team at Marvel Studios? In recent weeks, we've seen the House of Ideas pull the plug on both Howard the Duck and Tigra & Dazzler, a pair of adult-oriented animated shows. Now that Marvel Studios serves as the parent company to Marvel Television, only four non-Marvel Studios productions remain on track for release — the final season of Agents of SHIELD for ABC, a live-action Helstrom series, and animated MODOK and Hit-Monkey shows. The latter three are expected to hit Hulu at some point this year.

As we've seen since Disney's acquisition of 20th Century, the House of Mouse has been all about efficiency and reducing redundancy. If you're looking for an overused corporate buzzword, Bob Iger and his team are all about synergy. It makes sense to use the same leaders for both Disney+ and Hulu and in the same vein, it makes sense to have Marvel property under one roof. To take it one step further, it makes sense for Disney to have most of its original content on platforms owned and operated by the mouse.

Reducing the middle-men between the movers and shakers of original content and corporate overlords should make it easier for things to get pushed through, especially when it comes to a mega-franchise like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After all, you'll have folks like Iger and Mayer trying to pinch as many pennies out of their product as possible, no matter what format or platform it comes across on.

Right now, the focus is all on Disney+, we've been told that time and time again. But at some point, Disney is going to want content from its biggest franchise on some of its other platforms. Since Disney+ is strictly geared towards family, maybe that means doing an adult-oriented imprint on Hulu. With the massive influx in promotion for the FX on Hulu brand, it's hard to imagine the Mouse wants to keep franchise like Marvel and Star Wars away from it on a permanent basis.

Of course, this is all just speculation. Maybe Disney and Marvel Studios fully plan on producing content for — and only for — theatrical release and Disney+. But in a world ruled by the almighty dollar, one would think Disney wants to saturate its top performers on as many platforms as possible and it'd seem that was just made a tad easier with some corporate restructuring.

Cover photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for Hulu