Disney Needs Marvel Television Back Now More Than Ever

Within the past few weeks, Disney has temporarily laid off a reported 70,000 employees between Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Additional reports say even more employees at Walt Disney Studios and Marvel Entertainment have been subjected to temporary furloughs. No matter which way you look at it, it’s likely the company — like virtually every other business in the country, mind you — will emerge from the ongoing pandemic changed on a permanent basis.

Therein likes the biggest reason why Disney should think about bringing Marvel Television back in its proper form. Prior being to being absorbed by Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios and being turned into Marvel TV Studios, the Jeph Loeb-led outfit had just as many many projects in development as the silver screen superior. But thanks to the introduction of Disney+, the company’s content output was changed significantly towards a focus on streaming, paving the way for a reduction in redundancies between Studios and Television.

It doesn’t matter if Disney is the biggest media conglomerate in the land, the company is still in the business of making money. With a recession upon us — one in which the International Monetary Fund calls the worst since the Great Depression — one would think even the mightest of titans will eventually have to change their ways in order to stick around.

That’s why Marvel Television’s low-budget shows are the ideal content to continue pumping out in the coming weeks. When the company was overseen by Ike Perlmutter, we all know the drastic steps it took to keep budgets as low as possible. Look at Inhumans — they shaved Medusa (Serinda Swan) and gave Karnak (Ken Leung) a concussion so that they didn’t have to spend extra money on visual effects. Iron Fist was kept without Shou-Lao the Undying, a massive dragon each Immortal Iron Fist is required to kill.

Those sacrifices weren’t the most ideal for fans hoping to see super-accurate representations of the characters they could see in comics. But they were, however, something that could be cranked out relatively quickly with the smallest budgets possible. We’re not saying to purposefully bring back the decisions the aforementioned shows may have made, but it stands to reason there’s still decent content to be had with smaller budget characters on platforms other than Disney+. After all, Business 101 tells us not to put all of our eggs in the same basket…right?

This pandemic is already changing our futures as we know it, that much is apparent. It’s increasingly likely even a behemoth like Disney is going to end up having to make sacrifices at one point or another to stay afloat. Should that be the case, would you rather have a small-budget, street-level comic book show or no content to consume whatsoever?

Do you think we’ll ever get a Marvel Television resurrection? Why or why not? Think it over and let us know your thoughts in the comments below or by hitting me up on Twitter at @AdamBarnhardt!