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marvel cinematic universe - Why does the MCU have TV-MA rated shows?


The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is primarily made up of content rated PG-13 and TV-14. The MCU generally targets a pretty wide audience including children, teens, families, and adults.



Since it is less likely that the same young viewers watching, for example, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. would watch a TV-MA show, I'm just curious as to how Marvel came to the decision.


To clarify, I'm not saying they can't cater to different demographics. It makes sense that Marvel, wanting to make as much money as possible, would make TV shows for all sorts of audiences:



  • cartoon shows for younger viewers

  • TV-14 shows for teens and families

  • TV-MA shows for mature audiences


So, purely out of curiosity, has Marvel shared their reasoning for having TV-MA content in the MCU?


Note: this is not opinion-based since I am asking for any reasons Marvel has offered to back up their decision.



Answer




To my knowledge, Marvel has never made a statement that specifically says "We want to have mature content in the same universe as our PG movie/TV content."


However, you can pretty much build up that statement from the pieces they have made clear:



  • They want their movies to appeal to a wide audience, especially a family (and thus, toy-buying) audience, so their movies will likely always strive for a PG-level rating.

  • They want to expand their market as wide as they can, so they are exploring other media outlets, such as broadcast television (ABC) and streaming media services (Netflix).

  • Broadcast TV is already very tightly regulated in terms of content, especially during prime-time, so that material will also likely remain TV-14-ish.

  • However, Marvel has source material that is not PG-friendly (primarily the Max line of comics), and would like to find ways to monetize that material to produce "deeper" or "more mature" content for their rather large over-18 audience that would appreciate.

  • They want all of their media to be in the same universe because they feel that fans will appreciate it more, and it will entice audiences to more readily pick up and consume various media formats if they're all somehow related.


So, it's not really that Disney/Marvel specifically wants to "introduce TV-MA material into a TV-14 world". Rather, they want to explore all of the various forms of media they have, but they also want to keep their live-action media in one universe, so the intermingling of audience levels is just a side-effect.



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