https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/live-feed/marvel-tv-topper-jeph-loeb-exit-1247867

Marvel TV Topper Jeph Loeb to Exit

10:52 AM PDT 10/22/2019 by Lesley Goldberg

The executive led the comic book powerhouse into live-action originals and had been plotting his departure since before Kevin Feige was given oversight of all divisions, including television.

Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb is out at the comic book powerhouse after a nearly decade-long run.

Sources say Loeb has been working on a transition plan to exit the company and is expected to formally announce his departure by Thanksgiving. Those same sources note that Loeb — who steered Marvel into live-action scripted TV originals with ABC's Agents of SHIELD — had been prepping to leave well before the Oct. 15 news that Kevin Feige had been elevated to the role of Marvel's chief creative officer.

Marvel declined to comment.

With his promotion, Feige — who has overseen Marvel's multibillion-dollar box office dominance — now oversees the creative direction of the company's content creation, including publishing, film, TV and animation. As part of the consolidation, Loeb's Marvel TV and the animation-focused Marvel Family Entertainment have also moved under Feige's Marvel Studios banner. That officially knocks down the wall that had existed between Marvel's film and TV units.


READ MORE
Kevin Feige Upped to Chief Creative Officer of Marvel

While Feige successfully led Marvel's film unit to its first best picture Oscar nomination (for Black Panther, the first superhero movie to ever earn such praise) and its record-breaking Avengers: Endgame box office return (topping Avatar as the highest-grossing film of all time), Loeb's TV efforts haven't proved nearly as successful.


Proof of Feige's success can be seen in the fact that Disney+ — the forthcoming streaming service from Marvel's parent company — turned to the film division to oversee TV series. Marvel will be a cornerstone of Disney+ — which is set to launch Nov. 12 — with spinoffs of MCU titles including Loki (starring Tom Hiddleston), WandaVision (with Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen) and Falcon & the Winter Soldier (led by Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan). Other Marvel TV series set to launch on the streamer include What If, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk and Moon Knight. All of those shows are produced not by Loeb's unit, but by Feige's film division.

In his decade at the helm of Marvel TV, Loeb was responsible for a number of broadcast, basic cable and streaming scripted originals. But many of them had strict rules about integrations with the MCU. ABC's Agents of SHIELD featured occasional yet minor tie-ins with Avengers and will end in 2020 after seven seasons. (The show, starring Clark Gregg and Ming Na, has been a middling ratings performer and was moved to Fridays, where it had reduced viewership expectations.) ABC and Marvel attempted a SHIELD spinoff back in 2015 that did not move forward. ABC's most successful Marvel show — the female-fronted Agent Carter — came and went after two low-rated but critically praised seasons. (Star Hayley Atwell, meanwhile, has continued to appear in Marvel films and will be in What If for Disney+.) Efforts to develop other live-action fare for ABC fizzled, including a rumored show from John Ridley. Sources note that ABC remains committed to having Marvel on the network and, as of August, is prepping another show. (In keeping with Marvel tradition, details are being closely guarded.)

Elsewhere, Loeb was behind the ground-breaking five-show Netflix deal for one larger, connected Marvel world featuring Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Luke Cage and the mashup miniseries The Defenders, many of which experienced showrunner changes. While Jessica Jones was able to cut through critically, many of the others came and went after a weekend. (Netflix does not release viewership data.) Marvel's relationship with Netflix officially ended in February when the streamer canceled Jessica Jones as Disney continued to pull back from supplying a competitor with content as it preps for the debut of its own streaming platform.

Elsewhere, Loeb expanded Marvel's TV footprint to cable with series including Noah Hawley's now-completed Legion and Freeform's younger-skewing Cloak and Dagger. And on the streaming side, while Feige prepped film spinoffs for Disney+, Loeb readied a slate of animated shows for Disney-owned Hulu. That slate — MODOK, Hit-Monkey, Tigra & Dazzler and Howard the Duck, plus the mashup The Offenders — has yet to debut and will join the live-action YA drama The Runaways at the streamer.

While Loeb has been able to get shows on the air, few have managed to break through the clutter in crowded Peak TV landscape numbering 500-plus scripted shows. Loeb, too, also has had his share of missteps. Marvel's highly anticipated take on New Warriors — a half-hour scripted comedy featuring beloved character Squirrel Girl — was picked up straight to series in April 2017 at Disney-owned Freeform and dropped seven months later. In March 2018, FX and creators Donald Glover and Stephen Glover bailed from Marvel's planned Deadpool animated TV series, citing creative differences. (Emmy winner Donald Glover went on to rip Marvel for the decision.) More recently, a live-action Ghost Rider series — which was poised to be part of a second shared Marvel universe at Hulu alongside Helstrom — was scrapped five months after being picked up straight to series.

Loeb's biggest misstep may have been the 2017 take on Inhumans, which on paper was built to be a success. In a unique partnership, ABC and Marvel teamed with Imax to produce the Anson Mount starrer. The pairing was designed to give the series an early leg up before its ABC debut by having the first two episodes debut in Imax theaters, a bid to expose the show to fans of the MCU. The move failed as the series grossed a tiny $2.6 million theatrically from its global launch in 676 theaters, with $1.5 million of that coming from nearly 400 screens in North America. The Marvel TV effort — which featured a 2,000-pound CGI dog (yes, really) — underwent a series of reshoots, including an estimated $100,000 to fix a VFX wig. The critically panned series was canceled after one season.

------------------------------------------
America from 9:00 on: https://youtu.be/GUwLCQU10KQ