Marvel Studios No Longer Having MCU Actors Sign 9-Movie Contracts

Marvel Studios has loosened its multi-film requirements on incoming actors. The cinematic juggernaut had previously made headlines for its requirements to join The Avengers. Tom Hiddleston had to sign on to at least six films to become Loki, Samuel L. Jackson to nine, and Anthony Mackie to a whopping ten. For many actors, the deals promised long-term safety in lucrative employment, but a bear trap on time to pursue other projects.

While Mackie’s massive contract showed expectations on him becoming Captain America by The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, other contracts had less hope. Elizabeth Olsen as well just headlined her own series with WandaVision, yet Olsen was only signed onto two films at the start of her contract: a sign of how much her performance affected the MCU’s plans. For Robert Downey Jr., who was there at the genesis of the MCU, contracts have been mostly movie-to-movie given Iron Man’s necessity gave Downey and Marvel mutual ability to leverage one another.

Marvel Studios is no longer requiring expansive contracts, according to THR. Given the amount of famous faces debuting in the MCU between Eternals and Black Widow (and potentially a new Black Widow herself), this is a huge jump from Marvel’s previous strategies to maintain star power across multi-film arcs. Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios, recognized how the franchise has become enough of an incentive itself for keeping actors. Read what Feige said below:

Really, what we want are people that come in, are excited to be in the universe, are excited at the opportunity to do more things, as opposed to being locked into contractual obligations.

For many actors in the MCU, that “locking in” had been a deterrent, with Chris Evans fighting for his six-film contract instead of the nine Marvel asked of him. Now that Marvel is the highest grossing franchise of all time, more than doubling the total box office gross of the second place, Star Wars, locking superstars into multi-film deals with pen and paper has become overkill. Oscar winners like Mahershala Ali and Angelina Jolie had plenty of bait towards pop culture impact, pay per film, and general fun of being in the MCU’s celebrity clubhouse — and the promise of a ball-and-chain would have only been an obstacle to coming on board.

One major impact this news would have on fans is losing the ability to gauge which actors will survive which films based on their contracts continuing; many knew Chris Pratt and Tom Holland would return after Avengers: Endgame due to their deals not being up yet. Otherwise, it very well may be a sign of Marvel Studios having less long-term arcs and characters and instead more variety. Disney+’s need to create swarms of MCU content in order to maintain subscribers gives the service more incentive to fund a million different actors in a million different mini-series, rather than a small cast of familiar faces that could only physically film so much content per year.

Source: THR

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