Netflix’s Sarandos Talks Marvel Show Cheapness

Post-“Endgame,” Marvel began its fourth ‘phase’ with bold TV ambitions. Key to that was Marvel Studios taking over the TV shows and effectively ending the relationship Marvel had with Netflix to produce series.

The old Marvel Television pumped out six shows for Netflix, some of which were highly acclaimed like the first seasons of “Daredevil” and “Jessica Jones”. But the shows were also criticised for being a bit cheap looking.

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos recently sat down with Variety for an interview and reflected on the relationship between the streamer and Marvel last decade.

He says producing those Marvel series often was tricky because Marvel was fixated on cutting costs in order to keep the budget for themselves:

“On our shows, we were dealing with the old Marvel television regime, which operated independently at Disney. And they were thrifty. And every time we wanted to make the shows bigger or better, we had to bang on them. Our incentives were not well aligned. We wanted to make great television; they wanted to make money. I thought we could make money with great television.

You want to work with people whose incentives are aligned with yours. When people are producing for you, they’re trying to produce as cheaply as possible. My incentive is to make it as great as possible. That’s a lesson that I take forever. As producers, whatever [Marvel] didn’t spend, they kept. So every time we wanted to add something to the show to make it better, it was a fistfight.”

In the time since, the Marvel/Netflix characters have been welcomed into MCU canon with “Daredevil: Born Again” the start of a potential return of several characters from the Netflix series – this time in shows with proper budgets.

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