Why Is Disney+ Changing Their Release Strategy Starting With Echo?
As part of the television upfronts on Tuesday, Disney announced that the two remaining Marvel Studios shows would be released on Disney+ late in 2023. The second season of Loki would debut on October 6th, while the spinoff of Hawkeye entitled Echo would be released all at once on November 29th.
This has led to rampant speculation regarding the quality of Echo, considering that no Marvel show has been released following that binge format before. It's not the first Disney+ title to be released that way since just within the last month, The Muppets Mayhem was released in that format as have both seasons of Star Wars Visions and Tales of the Jedi. The question is, why is Echo the first Marvel Studios release to get this format?
This is purely speculation but I think it comes down to regime change. As CEO of Disney, Bob Chapek bet big on streaming to the point where multiple Pixar theatrical projects were punted to streaming, Marvel Studios released 17 projects in Phase 4 (of which only 7 were theatrically released), and Lucasfilm put a priority on streaming series over their theatrical offerings within the Star Wars franchise. Now that Iger is back in charge and Disney+ is proven to not be as profitable as it was previously shown to be (to the point where Chapek is being sued for allegedly lying to shareholders regarding the profitability) the time has come to scale back on the number of streaming-exclusive titles. The problem comes in when the sheer volume of produced content that is currently circling the runway has to be released is considered.
From Marvel Studios alone, there are Loki season 2, Secret Invasion, Echo, Ironheart, Agatha: Coven of Chaos, and the currently in production Wonder Man and Daredevil: Born Again. In animation, they also have X-Men, Spider-Man: Freshman Year, What If...? season 2, and Zombies. Lucasfilm has Skeleton Crew, Ahsoka, The Bad Batch season 3, Tales of the Jedi season 2, The Acolyte, The Mandalorian season 4, and Andor season 2. This omits Pixar's upcoming series Win or Lose and the second season of The Santa Clauses as well as any other releasing projects they may have that I'm forgetting. The point is there are a lot of projects here that need to come out in a relatively short amount of time, so the options on what to start dumping out quickly are limited.
For the sake of this we only have to look at the stuff scheduled for 2023 which are Secret Invasion, Ahsoka, Win or Lose, Loki, Skeleton Crew, Echo, and possibly The Santa Clauses. If season one is anything to go on, The Santa Clauses is probably a low enough budget where they can stagger it out weekly around Christmas and not worry about cannibalizing the audience for the show so that's unlikely to move. The same goes for Pixar's Win or Lose since the audience for that will skew younger. Secret Invasion is set for June and Ahsoka is set for August which leaves just Echo, Loki, and Skeleton Crew to be released between October and December of 2023.
The decision, if I'm looking at it, comes down to the new strategy of what streaming is used for. Streaming appears to be designed to supplement theatrical and basically serve as large budget promotions for movies. We know that Dave Filoni is developing a theatrical movie to wrap up the stories of the New Republic era and, according to rumors, Skeleton Crew and Ahsoka are both designed to tie into the movie's antagonist Grand Admiral Thrawn. Because of its use in that regard, releasing Skeleton Crew as a weekly show is a better way to generate interest in this corner of the universe. Considering we now know that Echo will be debuting after Loki ends, it is likely that Skeleton Crew is released in December.
On top of this, after the Ms. Marvel/Obi-Wan Kenobi ratings fiasco last year, it would appear that Disney has learned to try and keep the shows from overlapping on each other too much because it just harms the ratings of the shows. This means that if these series are going to come out, there will be little to no overlap between them.
This leaves the two Marvel shows remaining as a possibility to end up being binged. Following this similar mentality, Loki features the return of the Saga antagonist Kang the Conqueror, which will again build into a major theatrical experience with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars. On the other hand, Echo leads to a sort of narrative cul-de-sac where it leads to Daredevil: Born Again but there's no publicly known plan about where that goes from there. If it was simply the show's quality, it would have made more sense to have Marvel dump Loki all in one day so they don't have to worry about six weeks of bad press around having Jonathan Majors headline a show rather than, what would probably be at worst, mild press about a show that's just fine if not something truly great like Ms. Marvel or Hawkeye. In the same vein, it would not be surprising if Lucasfilm took a similar approach with The Acolyte when that comes out.
All of that said, this is all speculation. I don't know anyone within Disney. It's just looking at the trends and trying to make sense of a decision that was made with no explanation given to the general public. This could just as easily be wrong as it is right, but I'd lean more towards this is the most likely explanation for what went on here.
