The pandemic and leaning into Disney+ as the future is a massive shift. It allows them fast track a lot of properties for the small screen that prior to this they would’ve been trying to slot into a film schedule, which is much different and has a longer lead time. Think about it. For a big box office release you’re typically A) spending more money and B) competing with all other studios to find the right opening weekend. As such, you’re kind of limited, even if you’re Disney, to 3-4 films per year. Tops.
With Disney+, on the other hand, you can release a new 6-8 episode show every 6-8 weeks (assuming you don’t want them to overlap). With 52 weeks in a year that allows you to release 6-8 shows comfortably. So roughly doubles your capacity. Plus, if you’re still doing feature films concurrently which will get “day and date” release (like Black Widow will now)... well, that gives you tremendous opportunity to accelerate. Because if you’re still releasing 3-4 films per year, and can do 6-8 shows per year... now you’ve effectively tripled your capacity. And why wouldn’t you? It’s not like Feige has been sitting on his hands during the pandemic. He’s been working, and mapping this stuff out for years to come. My guess is that at some point you’ll pay extra for “premium content” like movies and perhaps even these shows, so that if you want to get them when they come out you pay a fee. Otherwise you wait until the 6-8 episode series has completed and they release it all at once to subscribers. Something like that is coming to replace lost box office gross. Count on it.
So my bet is the X-men are no longer 4-5 years away. We’ll start to see the mutants pop up sooner than that, and the Wolverine (or Weapon X) anthology series makes so much sense to me as a way to introduce that character. I know it’s a rumor, but it’s one that makes perfect sense to me and I could definitely see that being in the early stages right now.
Let me add that this doesn’t mean we won’t see mutant film projects. I still believe we’ll get an X-men big budget movie franchise. But this allows them to accelerate the build up to that via Disney+ shows, such as introducing Wolverine via a solo Dis+ show first. Which would be great because it gives that character time to breathe, and means that he won’t be the focus of the eventual X-men team film. Win-win.
Honestly, at this point if I’m Feige I’ve been working for some time now on my mutant plans and how specifically I want to differentiate the MCU X-men from the FOX versions. I have some of my own ideas on that front, but of course will be interested to see what Kevin Feige and Marvel actually do here... and how quickly they can now get it done.