Box Office Bomb: ‘The Marvels’ Opening to $47M-$52M in New Low for Marvel Studios

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The movie's performance fuels the theory that superhero fatigue is a real thing if a pic doesn't deliver on every front.

The Marvels is anything but marvelous so far at the box office.

Based on Friday earnings of $21.5 million, the Marvel Studios and Disney superhero tentpole is headed for a domestic opening of $47 million to $52 million to rank as the worst start in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Marvels marks a new low for Kevin Feige‘s Marvel Studios, which for years was unrivaled in its success, and bolsters the theory that superhero fatigue is a real thing as fanboys grow weary of a glut of titles and are far less forgiving.

Until now, rival DC was the superhero studio that endured the biggest ups and downs, with a good number of its films opening to $50 million or less (in comparison, many MCU releases started with $100 million or more domestically). This summer, DC’s The Flash debuted to a dismal $55 million domestically on its way to topping out at a paltry $270.6 million globally.

Word of mouth is already hurting The Marvels, which is only the third MCU title to receive a B CinemaScore from audiences after Eternals and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania. The vast majority of MCU releases have earned some variation of an A. Its Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score of 62 percent is likewise on the lower end.

The 33rd installment in the MCU is a sequel to the 2019 Brie Larson starrer Captain Marvel, which opened to $153.4 million in North America on its way to earning a massive $1.13 billion worldwide, not adjusted for inflation. That movie had a clear advantage in that it was teased in the post-credit scene of 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, while its titular star was a player in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame (it was released between the two Marvel mega-blockbusters).

To date, 2008’s The Incredible Hulk holds the record for the lowest domestic opening of any MCU title at $55.4 million, not adjusted for inflation (Marvel, which wasn’t owned by Disney at the time, partnered with Universal for Hulk). The next lowest MCU opening belongs to Marvel/Disney’s Ant-Man, which started with $57.2 million domestically in 2015.

In the new movie, Larson is joined by Iman Vellani, the breakout star of the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, as well as Teyonah Parris as the grown-up version of Captain Marvel character Monica Rambeau. The actor made her Marvel debut with WandaVision, which counted The Marvels screenwriter Megan McDonnell among its writers.

The Marvels is unique for a superhero film in that it stars three female leads. It was directed by Nia DaCosta, who is the first Black woman to direct a Marvel Studios movie, as well as the youngest director of an MCU film (DaCosta turns 34 on Nov. . Marvel has taken pride in fostering such indie directors as Ryan Coogler, Taika Waititi and Chloé Zhao.

The cast of The Marvels wasn’t able to do any promotion or publicity because of the SAG-AFTRA strike, although Larson and her co-stars sprung into action Thursday after the strike ended. Larson appeared on The Tonight Show on Friday, while she and her co-stars will surprise fans at various screenings of the movie in New York City.

Overseas, The Marvels is pacing to open to $60 million for a global start of $140 million, compared to nearly $190 million for Captain Marvel.

 

[TowinKarz]

You would think that at some point they would realize that they need to make good movies to get lots of money.

The problem is, they're so invested in their own DEI handbook that a movie with three, diverse, girlbosses IS a "good movie".

They just don't understand why the public these days is so adverse to going to see these "good movies".

 

[MirrorNoir]

Goes to show how out of the loop I've been with Marvel since 2015, because I didn’t even know that.

They should have just started with adapting Black Knight from Issue #1. Could've breathed life back into the franchise, but like you said the investors have no common sense.

Black Knight/Sersei (and the additional love rectangle of them plus Quicksilver and Crystal) was actually a 90s thing. Not a current comic thing.

From around 1991-1994, the love rectangle was one if not THE driving storylines and was the lynchpen of the "Evil Avengers" alternate Earth storyline* known as "The Gatherers" that was the main plot thread during those years.

*Even though they were evil alternate earth Avengers, the Gatherers were mostly OC characters. The only evil counterparts were Swordsman (who turned good), Vision (who was killed off twice after body swapping to restore Vision back to his old body), Black Panther (killed in his first appearance), Jocasta (only showing up at the very end of the story), and the leader Proctor, who was an incel version of Black Knight that looked nothing like Dane and was designed as looking more like Wonder Man)

Currently, Dane's batshit insane with the writers claiming that he was always insane and violent and sociopathic and just hid behind his cursed sword to "explain away his manic murder moments" and Sersei is dead, having sacrificed her life during AXE Judgement Day in a bid to stop a zombie Celestial from destroying the Earth.

 

[Pilgrim of Grace]

They should've cast Lizzo or the Calvin Klein troon.

That would be on track for Disney lately (wasn't Lizzo in a star wars show recently?).

Maybe they could get Dylan Mulvaney (spelling) to be their new Captain Marvel. 365 days of womanhood superhero-hood!

 

[SIMIΔN]

Other than Andor, I haven't even bothered pirating any Disney stuff since Endgame.

 

[mlanguishi]

Other than Andor, I haven't even bothered pirating any Disney stuff since Endgame.

I did some. Mando 1/2 were decent, then Book of Boba Fett and Obiwan killed Star Wars for me. Couldn't get into Andor at all, too boring. Mando season 3 was awful too. Ahsoka, c'mon.

For MCU I was done pretty much after Infinity War. They could've stopped there for a decade and I'd have been happy left on a nice cliff hanger.

 

[SIMIΔN]

Couldn't get into Andor at all, too boring

It's not very starwarsy, but judged on its own merits, Andor is incredible, just give it a chance.

 

[Magic Sun Daddy]

It was only a matter of time before the general audiences got bored of the influx of Capeshit movies.

After Endgame, there wasn’t anywhere else the franchise could go because the story that was 11 years in the making reached its rightful conclusion.

Now, if Marvel had anything beyond the well known avengers these days with the same mass appeal they likely wouldn't be in the current predicament that they're in right now.

Maybe they should’ve looked into silver age IPs for revivals if they wanted another franchise to spawn the same kind of multiple-film build up.

If only they had an intergenerational fantasy IP they could've brought back, that has the Stan Lee stamp of approval.

Too bad that doesn't exist.
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Three problems with your idea, homie:

1. Picking an IP that obscure would be a risk, which doesn't jive with the current model of low risk-high reward.
2. They would actually need to advertise the film to drum up interest instead of leaning on their brand name like they've been doing for years.
3. Say this actually does get picked up. You know as well as I do that they wouldn't be able to resist casting some B to C List black actor to play him just because of the name. Then we'll get the inevitable interview from the director where he/she/it calls the fans of the comic man babies and says "um acktually, there's no evidence suggesting that the IRL black knight wasn't actually a black man."

On a less cynical note, they would have to make a rock remix of this song for the trailer or the end credits

 

[tehpope]

You would think that at some point they would realize that they need to make good movies to get lots of money.

The executives at Disney think as long as it says Marvel, it'll make money. It doesn't have to be good. People will slurp up anything with the Disney and Marvel logos. So throw all the commie and SJW bullshit you can think of in there.

They were wrong.

They just don't understand why the public these days is so adverse to going to see these "good movies".

This is a good watch. Thank you @Pedophobe for suggesting it.

 

[KiwiFuzz]

Why doesn't Hamas attack Hollywood?

I would 10/10 watch a video of all these people being beaten to death with farm implements just to MAKE IT STOP.

 

[the clap]

If they had balls, now would be a good time for Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe

 

[Hightension]

If they had balls, now would be a good time for Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe

I don’t think they could even begin to make it work even in a screenplay.
I’d love to have a good director maybe a movie or even better mini series of the punisher story „the slavers“.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

The constant decline of this Franchise makes me glad I stopped back at Infinity War. I watched that, Thanos snapped, Thanos won, and I felt that was a fine conclusion for me. Never watched Endgame or anything past that, and feel like that was the right call. Didn't even have a good reason, just couldn't be bothered to go, and by the time I realized it I was like three films, a subscription fee and two television series behind the ball. Felt like too much work at that point, and if I wanted to put work into being entertained, I'd go and try and figure out where to find all the various Evangelion media for a rewatch.

I am curious what we will see as the 'next' cash cow style of cinema. There's exceedingly little that isn't cinematic universe bullshit at the Cinemas these days, and of the handful that are our there and being successes (Horror and mystery, mostly) none of them have anywhere close to the potential to scale to be a billion dollar franchise hit. I wonder how ragged the studios are gonna run themselves trying to catch lightning in a bottle the second time, and how they'll even manage to survive the attempt.

 

[Coptakhenaten]

Holy shit. 33 marvel films. Call it a day man. There aren't 33 movies of anything. Marvel has made more movies than the James Bond franchise and that started in the 60s.

There's almost 40 Godzilla movies. admittedly over 70 years with multiple gaps in between

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

She's a short dumpy and annoying teenager.

the tumblr stereotype are the best at consooming, chubby nerd girls are really common in porn now too.

Brie Larson is literally less like-able than Amber Heard

Brie was super cute in community and in that Danny Devito film, and most of her pre-captain marvel work. Amber heard might have been better looking but was clearly a bitch. Brie would have been an amazing girl sidekick, like if Captain Marvel was about jude law's character and Brie was the newbie with powers and she was the plucky rookie teamed up with the captain it would have worked. They just wrote her really badly, the problem with superman style powers is you need to focus on the internal struggle to make it relatable but people that write comic book movies are too stupid to realize that. Imagine if they wrote her as more insecure and neurotic with her just pretending to be a badass that knows what they're doing, that would have been extremely relatable to women, every teacher or nurse or manager i've met just has this near "superhero" persona and is a mess once they're away from their underlings.

 

[Thiletonomics]

It's not very starwarsy, but judged on its own merits, Andor is incredible, just give it a chance.

Given how hard Truderp is shilling there, I wouldn't be surprised if he was secretly shilling for Cuties, The Last of Us Part II, and Velma as well.

 

[Jason Wynn]

What I don’t get is if they’re this hellbent on shoving diversity into capeshit, why not go for some of the memorable and good diverse capeshit? Get Todd McFarlane to do a Spawn movie (one that doesn’t suck) make a movie about Michael LeRois, the Shadow Man. I’d watch those.

Marvel has been absolute dogshit for years and years now. Branch out a little.

 

[Clusterfuckk2]

It’s not just the Marvel movies. All the Disney movies recently are absolute dog shit and it’s all because they are too focused on shoving woke ideology down people’s throats when they just want to see a fucking movie and be entertained.
The characters are shallow and purposeless and of course the women characters are always the smartest and never face an adversity so there is no character progression.
It’s a shame but sooner or later the based reaper comes for everyone.

 

[Staffy]

An actual line from the movie: "Use Black Girl Magic!"

Fuck this movie.

That's just called Negromancy, right?

 

[Sithis]

An actual line from the movie: "Use Black Girl Magic!"

Fuck this movie.

That's just called Negromancy, right?

I thought "black girl magic" was just shoplifting

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Black Knight/Sersei (and the additional love rectangle of them plus Quicksilver and Crystal) was actually a 90s thing. Not a current comic thing.

From around 1991-1994, the love rectangle was one if not THE driving storylines and was the lynchpen of the "Evil Avengers" alternate Earth storyline* known as "The Gatherers" that was the main plot thread during those years.

*Even though they were evil alternate earth Avengers, the Gatherers were mostly OC characters. The only evil counterparts were Swordsman (who turned good), Vision (who was killed off twice after body swapping to restore Vision back to his old body), Black Panther (killed in his first appearance), Jocasta (only showing up at the very end of the story), and the leader Proctor, who was an incel version of Black Knight that looked nothing like Dane and was designed as looking more like Wonder Man)

Currently, Dane's batshit insane with the writers claiming that he was always insane and violent and sociopathic and just hid behind his cursed sword to "explain away his manic murder moments" and Sersei is dead, having sacrificed her life during AXE Judgement Day in a bid to stop a zombie Celestial from destroying the Earth.

The Gatherers was kinda interesting and I could have seen the MCU adapting it in some form in the 2010s because it's very inhumans/eternals/non-Fox property centric. It'd require them to have introduced the inhumans/eternals sooner as well as establish Dane Whitman. Not impossible, but it'd have been interesting. Plus, if they did it around the time of Guardians 2, we'd probably have had the setup for an eventual "Celestial Madonna" storyline for a film.

If I remember, wasn't a part of recent-ish Dane stuff that his daughter popped up around the AXIS event or something? It's a shame they aren't using Dane at all because he's a genuinely fun character and visually cool. We could even have the Dreadknight guy be a movie villain.

Three problems with your idea, homie:

1. Picking an IP that obscure would be a risk, which doesn't jive with the current model of low risk-high reward.
2. They would actually need to advertise the film to drum up interest instead of leaning on their brand name like they've been doing for years.
3. Say this actually does get picked up. You know as well as I do that they wouldn't be able to resist casting some B to C List black actor to play him just because of the name. Then we'll get the inevitable interview from the director where he/she/it calls the fans of the comic man babies and says "um acktually, there's no evidence suggesting that the IRL black knight wasn't actually a black man."

On a less cynical note, they would have to make a rock remix of this song for the trailer or the end credits

Black Knight's mythos could have been an interesting little thing to stick in Agents of Shield because we wound up with a season focused on the darkhold and ghost rider. Hell, it could be an interesting disney+ show if they just executed it averagely.

the tumblr stereotype are the best at consooming, chubby nerd girls are really common in porn now too.

Brie was super cute in community and in that Danny Devito film, and most of her pre-captain marvel work. Amber heard might have been better looking but was clearly a bitch. Brie would have been an amazing girl sidekick, like if Captain Marvel was about jude law's character and Brie was the newbie with powers and she was the plucky rookie teamed up with the captain it would have worked. They just wrote her really badly, the problem with superman style powers is you need to focus on the internal struggle to make it relatable but people that write comic book movies are too stupid to realize that. Imagine if they wrote her as more insecure and neurotic with her just pretending to be a badass that knows what they're doing, that would have been extremely relatable to women, every teacher or nurse or manager i've met just has this near "superhero" persona and is a mess once they're away from their underlings.

What's funny is that, iirc, Carol's powers grew over the years due to all sorts of events. Exploring the instability and fluctuations could have been fun as she tries to put on her "face" as a hero. Have it explained that Nick Fury had her be the deep space guardian of humanity sent away to mature her powers and not be a danger to earth. Have her be a stubborn but responsible hero that suffers from imposter syndrome. It could have been fun. Hell, part of her big arc in the comics was her constant struggles with feeling inadequate and her court martialing from the Avengers due to alcoholicism. They could have made a very relatable hero. In as much as I don't like Carol, her turning into a sorta semi-neurotic woman who puts on a strong front all the time and struggles with her feelings of vague inadequacy when compared to the legacy of Mar-Vell at least gives her an understandable genesis for her characterization in the current comics. She brutalized Tony Stark during Civil War 2 because Tony didn't want a police state based on some inhuman's algorithmic "future sight". She gets worfed about as often as Thor or Iron Man in big fights. She's constantly over her head and this is always reflected. She's more written on the Mary Sue side these days, but at least the comics give her more characterization than the fucking MCU.