The Marvels Gloomy Box Office Projection
Marvel Studio’s last mega-budget project for this year is The Marvels. The once invincible superhero movie company has undergone a box office collapse this year. The last big success with the Marvel name on it was Spiderman No Way Home (2021), which unquestionably blew the doors off at $1.9 billion but was questionable as a “Marvel Film”. It felt a lot more like a Sony film than what Kevin Feige has been launching since Endgame.
The final tally for Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness was $950 million. It may or may not have turned a profit, but the budget released to the public appears to have had little basis in reality when all of the reshoots are factored in.
Wakanda Forever came in at $100 million less than Doctor Strange 2 at a final tally of $850 million. Again, given Marvel’s perennial budget busting it undoubtedly lost money. Although, not a lot of it. Still, given that Black Panther made $1.3 billion. This was a critical underperformance for what had been the leading sub-franchise.
Thor Love and Thunder was a failure at $760 million. Assuming they actually made the film for their reported $250 million, (unlikely) by the time the promotional budget and interest payments are factored in it lost somewhere between $100 – $300 million.
Marvel has reached the point where all of its movies have to make a billion at the box office just to break even. The real money had been in streaming, physical media and merchandise sales.
Sadly, Disney+ devoured the streaming and physical media money, although the shill media hilariously keeps reporting the money Disney pays to itself as being “highly profitable.” “I have five dollars in my left pocket and five in my right, so when I move the five dollars in my right pocket to my left, I’ve doubled my money!” XXXX XXXXXX Disney CFO and graduate of the Benny Hill School of Finance.
The merch sales have had a catastrophic fall off.
Antman and the Wasp Quantomania was a flat-out bomb at $460 million. It was the worst failure in the history of Marvel Studios. It says so much about the current state of Marvel that they were convinced they had made an absolute banger of a movie, and were honestly shocked when it cratered. The access media threw up their hands and reported this fail as what it was, there was no putting lipstick on that pig.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 pulled in a much less disastrous $860 million. Although, it really wasn’t much to celebrate because the opening was so weak it looked like it would be another Antman 3. However, positive word of mouth gave the film very long legs at the box office. The thing is, the opening week is critical to the filmmakers because that is the week that the studio rakes in 85% of the box office take. The theaters only make money off popcorn and candy that first week. It quickly falls to something close to 50%. Consequently, a movie with long legs but a light first week at the box office is going to hurt a studio disproportionately. In any case, the shill-media was grateful to have anything to work with after Antman and the Wasp: Quantomania.
The Marvels will be released on November 10, and the initial box office projection is horrifying.
From our friends at Bounding Into Comics:
New opening weekend box office projections have been revealed for Marvel Studios’ upcoming The Marvels film and it claims the film will make less than box office loser Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and could claim the spot for not just the lowest opening weekend in Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) history, but the lowest grossing MCU film overall.
Box Office Pro shared their projects for The Marvels claiming the film will only gross between $50 million and $75 million in its domestic opening weekend.
They also predict it will bring in between $121 million and $189 million at the domestic box office.
Brie Larson’s first outing as Captain Marvel hauled in over a billion dollars but that was in 2019, literally a month before the sequel to Infinity War launched. Interest was at an all-time fever pitch. However, even then there were widespread reports of box office “fortifying” (Disney making mass ticket purchases to shore up the box office numbers).
And Disney may indeed try to fortify The Marvels as well but when you are talking those kinds of numbers it’s merely an exercise in face-saving. While Iman Velleni has way better fan relations going into this thing than Brie Larson did, her character has bombed in its every incarnation. Monica Rambeau is just sort of there.
This movie is going to bomb.
Upside for Marvel, at least they’re not LucasFilm.
