Veteran executive Jeph Loeb will be leaving his role as the head of Marvel TV before the end of the year as Kevin Feige expands his role…
Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb is expected to exit the company by the end of 2019.
The news of his departure comes just days after Kevin Feige expanded his role to take over creative leadership across all Marvel platforms including film, television, animation and comics. Feige’s promotion came as no surprise after he helped build Marvel Studios into a juggernaut over the past decade while grossing billions of dollars at the box office, not to mention helping produce ‘Black Panther’, which was the first ever Marvel movie nominated for a Best Picture award at the Oscars.
Loeb’s exit isn’t all that surprising given Feige’s new role where he will be in charge of the creative direction for Marvel as a company going forward. Feige had already taken on a much larger role with Marvel TV after the Disney+ streaming service was announced with several series expected to land there over the next few years.
Feige is currently developing series such as ‘Loki’ starring Tom Hiddleston, ‘WandaVision’ with Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen as well as ‘Falcon and Winter Soldier’ with Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan returning to their roles from several ‘Avengers’ films. Future projects include a new ‘Hawkeye’ series as well as ‘Ms. Marvel’, ‘She-Hulk’ and ‘Moon Knight’. Feige’s planned expansion into television will also incorporate some of these characters back into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is a move that had never really been done before when Loeb was in charge of Marvel TV.
Marvel TV and Marvel Studios were largely kept apart outside of a few mentions here and there on shows such as ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ which was the company’s first foray into television.
Loeb did help develop a relationship between Marvel and Netflix, which led to series such as ‘Daredevil’, ‘Jessica Jones’ and ‘The Punisher’ landing on the streaming service. Unfortunately the development of Disney+ put them in direct competition with Netflix and it didn’t take long for the streaming giant to cancel every Marvel series on their platform.
Loeb also expanded Marvel’s TV footprint with shows such as ‘Runaways’ on Hulu as well as ‘Cloak and Dagger’ on Freeform, which have both found success over the past few years.
Unfortunately, Loeb also misfired a number of times with various TV shows that were developed including the critically panned ‘Iron Fist’ that struggled to gain an audience on Netflix as well as ‘Agent Carter’ — a spinoff of the character from ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ that saw Hayley Atwell reprise her role — but the show failed to build ratings and was ultimately cancelled after two seasons.
Loeb also played a part in the disastrous ‘Inhumans’ series, which lasted for only one season on ABC and not only was the show a ratings blunder but the series was almost universally lambasted by critics.
There’s no word yet on when Loeb will officially leave Marvel but it’s expected that he will exit before the end of the year as Feige prepares to take over at the studio. Prior to his work at Marvel TV, Loeb was a successful comic book and TV writer while working on series such as ‘Smallville’ and ‘Lost’. He also penned the critically acclaimed comic ‘Batman: The Long Halloween’, which has been rumored as potential inspiration for the upcoming film ‘The Batman’ from director Matt Reeves.
H/T: Hollywood Reporter
