This week, fans of MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) were in for a surprise when Netflix canceled two of its most popular Marvel original series, “The Punisher” and “Jessica Jones,” which left fans questioning the decision. Shows like “Iron Fist,” “Luke Cage,” “Daredevil” and group show “The Defenders,” which featured all of the heroes joined together, departed recently from Netflix. This caused speculation as to why the streaming service would cancel when the shows in question were still garnering attention and had high viewership among fans.
One speculation for this shift is that Netflix was making a power move to show how easily they can obtain rights to content like MCU shows in order to build themselves up. No show is safe if this is the case. Recently, Netflix has been releasing more and more original TV shows, documentaries and movies that have turned the service into a huge brand apart from the declining amount of other shows streamed.
Courtesy: Syfy
Another plausible reason would be that Netflix is slowly removing everything related to the Walt Disney franchise before Disney introduces its own exclusive streaming service called Disney+. This will be released later this year. We can expect to have more information on the exact date of release and content on Apr. 11.
Five years ago, Netflix made a contract with Disney in order to stream their shows and movies, and now Disney has decided not to renew in favor of starting Disney+. Technically, Disney owns all Marvel TV programming, which includes the shows produced by Netflix that paid a large sum of money for a licensing fee to create the shows.
MCU fans should not give up hope just yet as there are rumors that Disney+ could renew the shows later on if they choose to and looking at how popular the shows have been in the past, it’s a possibility. Jeph Loeb, Marvel Television Executive Producer, stated after the announcement, “On behalf of everyone at Marvel Television, we couldn’t be more proud or grateful to our audience. Our Network partner may have decided they no longer want to continue telling the tales of these great characters…but you know Marvel better than that.” This leads us to believe that Marvel might just have something else in the works for these shows and storylines for the future.
Courtesy: TechHive
Disney+ has already announced some interesting spin-off shows from their movies including highly anticipated shows centering around popular MCU characters like Loki and a live-action Star Wars TV show as well. In addition to the upcoming release of Disney’s streaming service, Marvel Television also has a contract for a four-series and one special deal with Hulu.
After Disney merges with Fox, they will own 60% of Hulu, which is why Disney has slowly started to leave Netflix and appear on Hulu. Hulu already streams Marvel’s young adult series “The Runaways,” and is set to add adult animated Marvel shows based on different superheroes in the MCU. Fans of Marvel and Star Wars will be getting lots of new content in the near future through the Disney+ and Hulu streaming services despite Netflix’s cancellations and removals of Disney shows and movies.