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

Article | Archive

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.

 

[Product Placement]

The Marvels was tracking this badly for the past few weeks, even if it has strong legs going to still lose money. I heard the budget is anywhere between $220 to $270 million, so this could end up losing more Indiana Jones 5.

I would have never thought this would have flopped if you asked me a year or two ago, but after the all Disney+ over milking and Ant-Man 3 the brand is clearly damaged and not sure how they can fix it without doing a massive cull of projects and making sure the few they do have are high quality.

I would kill every show not yet to film, and make a follow up seasons to shows that did well if they want to make more stuff. Honestly would even look into doing a tax write off on Ironheart and Agatha: Darkhold Diaries. Wonder Man, stopped filming due to strikes I would also kill.

Thunderbolts, Blade and Armor Wars I would outright cancel. Maybe rework Thunderbolts into a TV show in a few years and give Blade a stand alone lower budget R movie treatment after multiverse saga has wrapped up.

 

[pikachudidnothingwrong]

Crash and burn! It so nice to finally see what modern media really counts for.. after the woke hype fades and people get burned a few times.

Making a second movie with a character being played as an insufferable dull cunt is probably a mistake. As is all the woke shit. It's almost like creating characters specifically and solely based on their actor's/actress's identity is NOT a good way to make movies or any other media.... I can't imagine taking the spotlight from the main character to do it helps much either. Especially with diversity characters. Crap like this:



Doesn't help either.

Hero stuff is supposed to be escapism (yes, cape pun) but I don’t want to hear a dulux color card nag me for 2hr.

This.. very much this!

Haven't you heard though? Escapism, much like fun, is "problematic" now.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

The Marvels was tracking this badly for the past few weeks, even if it has strong legs going to still lose money. I heard the budget is anywhere between $220 to $270 million, so this could end up losing more Indiana Jones 5.

I would have never thought this would have flopped if you asked me a year or two ago, but after the all Disney+ over milking and Ant-Man 3 the brand is clearly damaged and not sure how they can fix it without doing a massive cull of projects and making sure the few they do have are high quality.

I would kill every show not yet to film, and make a follow up seasons to shows that did well if they want to make more stuff. Honestly would even look into doing a tax write off on Ironheart and Agatha: Darkhold Diaries. Wonder Man, stopped filming due to strikes I would also kill.

Thunderbolts, Blade and Armor Wars I would outright cancel. Maybe rework Thunderbolts into a TV show in a few years and give Blade a stand alone lower budget R movie treatment after multiverse saga has wrapped up.

I think they should have tried the "introduce a lotta heroes and names from the comics" shit during the 2010s in the leadup to infinity wars. They didn't even bother to use the heroes and names from agents of shield in that.

Also, let's see.

>Ironheart. A character everyone hates
>Agatha, a character that's been around since the '60s Stan and Jack days, but has gone underutilized and requires more work to make relevant. I'd be neutral if it wasn't so obvious that they want to turn her into some big "icon".
>Wonder Man, a hero that could be interesting if they included him in the earlier MCU in some form and built it up to this point.
>Thunderbolts, the marvel answer to the suicide squad. Not a bad concept, but I think they'd fuck it up.
>Blade. Just follow the formula and lessons of why people liked the earlier films.
>Armor Wars. I uh. Is this gonna be tony coming back to life and going all ham on people using his tech for bad purposes? IDK. It has potential but I feel like they'd Mary Sue Ironheart into being the protagonist to an antagonistic Tony.

As for Ant-Man 3, I heard that they just lost the plot by making it too abstract. Shame.

Crash and burn! It so nice to finally see what modern media really counts for.. after the woke hype fades and people get burned a few times.

Making a second movie with a character being played as an insufferable, dull cunt is probably a mistake. As is all the woke shit. It's almost like creating characters specifically and solely based on their actor's/actress's identity is NOT a good way to make movies or any other media.... I can't imagine taking the spotlight from the main character to do it helps much either. Especially with diversity characters. Crap like this:

View attachment 5490129

Doesn't help either.




This.. very much this!

Haven't you heard though? Escapism, much like fun, is "problematic" now.

Yeah, they forget that people watch superheroes. . . any story with heroes really, for escapism. People are willing to tolerate having different race/gender/etc of hero as long as they're written and acted decently. I mean, Ellen Ripley is a beloved hero and she's a woman.


Like come on. Just give us the good shit. Humanize them. Earlier MCU at least tried to humanize Tony, Steve, and Thor. They tried to humanize Black Widow. Etc.

How hard is it to just have Carol or Monica act like a normal person and not like a #girlboss #bossbabe. Marvel was always the comics publisher that humanized the heroes. There's hundreds of examples for the writer/director/actor to just pull up and read. It's just normal shit.


Then again, the MCU kinda didn't do Namor justice. I don't know what else they'd fuck up.

 

[Cyclonus]

There is one foolproof way to save comic book movies. Adapt this:

Spoiler

It's about a boy and his magical transistor radio.

 

[6thRanger]

I want to blame the woke messaging and political allegiance of the people behind the recent MCU films, but the bigger truth is theyre just shit movies. The soul vs souless statement has been reduced to parody at this point but it really applies.

Almost all characters uses nanotech/their costumes look the same. Almost all characters are out of shape/no longer willing to put in the effort. Almost all characters uses quips and speak with the same voice. Almost every movie allocates time to pointless scenes/cameros. Almost every movie must contain substantial humor in the same style. Almost every movie has given up on describing why something is happening in a reasonable way. Almost every movie has the heroes powers visually resemble each other to the point of boredom. Almost every movie is longer than it needs to be. Almost every movie smooths out the protagonists flaws to the point where theyre occassionally presented as strength.

The fact that on top of all this they elevate female characters at the expense of world building and male characters makes this "franchise" a fucking train wreck. The last 3-4 movies have been shit movies bogged down even further by leftist politics. For generations television and film has been political, but they made good movies first and foremost.

Every day I see random people generating better stories about these characters in less than 10 minutes. The MCU is just embarassing. As a lifelong capeEnjoyer how arrogant, souless and reckless they are is mind blowing.

 

[Seafarer]

I thought Lucas' idea of going into a micro midichlorian style world was a bad idea, but it might've actually been crazy enough to be better than the sequels.

The idea that Lucas’s Sequel Trilogy would have been some Magic School Bus romp through a microscopic world is misinfo spread by Disney shill journoscum in order to be like “You chuds think the Disney ST was bad? Well Lucas’s would’ve been WAY WORSE ”.

The midochlorian shit would have been a B-plot at best and done by the heros as a way to better understand the force (as an aside, midochlorians never explained the force, they explained force-sensitivity, something that Lucas A-logs consistently mistake). They also wouldn’t literally enter a microscopic world.

Also Lucas’s ST stuff was an incomplete draft anyways. The barebones of it was copied by Disney (iirc because one of the conditions of the Lucasfilm deal was that Disney had to use SOME of Lucas’s draft) but then made worse because Disney wanted TFA to be a “safe” retread of ANH. They basically treated Lucas like a senile old coot for the ST before finding out they really couldn’t do better.

 

[dick brain]

What a surprise. Turns out that cutting cinema release windows to zero and streaming all your movies for two years during coof really turns people off the big screen. Wow. No way etc

No, plenty of people still go to the movies. Just not this one. I basically see movies for free and I am still not going to see this one, it's not worth my time.

 

[Haramburger]

View attachment 5489340

kek, that bluesky social tag. Good luck getting people to switch over lol

Carol works better in a group than solo, imo. And yes, her powers can dwarf a lot of other heroes' powers but the reason she benefits from a group is because she can be very unlikeable. That's actually part of her comics identity. BUT, she is also very competent and very driven. In some ways she's an anti-Captain America as he is all about the inspiring, freedom and believe in yourself. And she is more of a kick your arse and move it type leader. Which does have its place. But it takes a good writer and co-stars to make that work. Otherwise you just have a solo movie about someone with some sharp personal edges.

If I were writing a Captain Marvel movie, I would have half of the runtime be her saddled with a bad bunch of not-quite heroes who she moulds into a real team and in the second half they come together and work together like she taught them and maybe save her in doing so.

I don't want to overstate her personality issues. She's someone you could get on with and is undoubtedly a good guy, but she's very alpha and a little disciplinarian. If you saw Cap or Nick Fury handing a class of new recruits over to Carol to train, you ought to be able to see the groans on the recruits' faces as they anticipate a timed 8 mile run with pack. You need to lean into her personality a little. The Captain Marvel movie tried to have its cake and eat it by having her be a bit like that but still be a audience-warming friend. You can do it, but like I say, works better in an ensemble where you can sympathise with her personality because you aren't the sole receiving end of it - her team mates are and the writers can show how they benefit from it.

The game Marvel's Midnight Suns wrote her very well. Greatly underrated game.

This is similar to why I like Superman in the context of the Justice League, he's interesting on a team because of the character dynamics and occasionally his powers are a problem. I remember one adventure some random dracula just hypnotizes Superman, and that would be the end of the world if the entire other cast of superheroes weren't there to fuck the vampire up and having magic people in pocket to immediately fix it.

 

[The handsome tard]

Captain marvel only made money because it was put between I.W and Endgame, thats it. Nothing more or less. She was artificially inserted into popularity by her rich daddy, Kevin Faggy.

But now that the big players left or got cucked out of their coolness, now she has no popular character to orbit around to give said artificial feeling of popularity.

Now she had to stand on her own and, not only that, but have other characters try to orbit off of her, like Miss Marvel (another character that Marvel keeps trying to make it work but it just wont fucking happen). So shockingly it all fell apart because they clearly overestimated her popularity, they bought into their own artificial lie, like a narcissist that somehow started to believe their own lies and now had to pretend it was always the truth.

The age of capeshit is over and maybe its for the better. Heroes will always remain but the genre needs a hiatus from constant content. My prediction is that the age of video game adaptations are here to stay after Sonic, Mario and Fnaf made insane amounts of money.

How about this one?

View attachment 5485985

I prefer this one

Turns out pandering to gays and women aren't profitable

Shockingly, comic book heroes, a mainly male power fantasy story genre, wouldnt work that well with gays and women and gay women.

You cant just fucking pretend that females didnt look down on comic book nerds for DECADES for merely having one in their room as decoration. Entire dates ended with the woman leaving in petty disaproval because she found out her date likes nerd shit. Only reason to like it NOW is because its the popular thing to like but once it isnt, its back to what it once was.

My point is, anything that women like it, more times than not, is because of trends, even if they contradict their own demonstrated preferences.

 

[God of Nothing]

My prediction is that the age of video game adaptations are here to stay after Sonic, Mario and Fnaf made insane amounts of money.

oh dear fucking god

My point is, anything that women like it, more times than not, is because of trends, even if they contradict their own demonstrated preferences.

most women don't have hobbies: they have social activities
it just so happens the more you know of certain nerd shit, the more social points you get now

I remember when anime was weird geek shit and now it's le heckin kinorino. I remember when video games were weird geek shit and now it's mainstream. I remember when fucking tabletop was the geekiest of the eeky, and now people talk about it like they actually play. Fucking larping was a forbidden black art only for the most delusional and lamest nerds but that's seen as cool now.
i fucking hate normies

 

[Sniperwoof]

But, muh muslims! Muh immagrints! Muh overseas MidEast box office (which will either ban our films or censor them to hell and back)!

Do these films even screen in the middle east? I was under the impression most Islamic nations basically ban all western media.

 

[Fartificial Insmelligence]

Never forget that THIS is the type of character Marvel wants to force on you and make you love and accept them and buy all their merch:

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Like come on. Just give us the good shit. Humanize them. Earlier MCU at least tried to humanize Tony, Steve, and Thor. They tried to humanize Black Widow. Etc.

Also a LOT better written as a whole. The first three Marvel movies actually had full (not junior) novelizations based on the scripts, but those were killed after Disney. For good reason...can you imagine the quips and product placement in some of them? I mean, Iron Man's product placement was very well in check (the Burger King bag, etc.) but later movies it's practically Super Bowl-tier advertising. (It's also worth noting how Iron Man was much more grounded in reality than later movies...he's a weapons manufacturer in the Iraq War).

 

[Kane Lives]

Never forget that THIS is the type of character Marvel wants to force on you and make you love and accept them and buy all their merch:

View attachment 5490557
View attachment 5490558

I am still astonished that no one looked at this and went "holy shit, the little girl sounds like a psychopath". And that last four panel can easily belong in a horror comic where she later murders the nice teacher.

 

[Fartificial Insmelligence]

Also a LOT better written as a whole. The first three Marvel movies actually had full (not junior) novelizations based on the scripts, but those were killed after Disney. For good reason...can you imagine the quips and product placement in some of them? I mean, Iron Man's product placement was very well in check (the Burger King bag, etc.) but later movies it's practically Super Bowl-tier advertising. (It's also worth noting how Iron Man was much more grounded in reality than later movies...he's a weapons manufacturer in the Iraq War).

When I think back to when that first Iron Man came out… I was a teenager, and one of those gear-porn kids that didn’t really understand much about the gear itself but loved seeing it. Those early Iron Man suits were so cool to see, and so fun on-screen. Now everybody has some nanotech bullshit that also doubles as street clothes, so they never have that plot point of having to sneak away to change into-costume… Modern hero movies really ruin all the tropes, huh?

 

[God of Nothing]

I am still astonished that no one looked at this and went "holy shit, the little girl sounds like a psychopath". And that last four panel can easily belong in a horror comic where she later murders the nice teacher.

Welcome to nuworld comicbooks
where villains are right and heroes are egotistical cunts

Spoiler: so no clutter

 

[The handsome tard]

Never forget that THIS is the type of character Marvel wants to force on you and make you love and accept them and buy all their merch:

View attachment 5490557
View attachment 5490558

"Please oppress me so I can feed my victim narrative"

These people, and their characters, are delusional

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Can we just end not just superhero movies but superheros all together already, please?

 

[mlanguishi]

Can we just end not just superhero movies but superheros all together already, please?

They need to let Zack Snyder do a few more and totally kill the genre like he helped do to the Zombie movies with Army of the Dead. Wow that was awful.

 

[Safir]

Never forget that THIS is the type of character Marvel wants to force on you and make you love and accept them and buy all their merch:

Wait, this is great writing. The little attention whore is like "waaaaycism, also fuck you fat wagie" and the based wagie teacher turns the woke on her and shuts her down.

where villains are right and heroes are egotistical cunts

Oh wow.
(On second thought, the guy could be lying about his values, like most rightwing influencers do IRL. The niglet comic doesn't allow for a charitable interpretation.)