Woke Disney’s latest film, “The Marvels” is continuing on with its historically horrible release, setting yet another “worst ever” record for the Marvel Cinematic Universe on the second weekend after its opening: with a 78 percent decline, it had the worst-ever second weekend cratering for a Marvel movie.
For reference, “The Marvels” set its first ignominious record by having the worst-ever opening for a Marvel movie, doing even worse than “The Hulk,” which came out long before the MCU movies were as popular as they now are. The Hulk opened with $79 million in ticket sales in the United States and Canada, whereas “The Marvels” only managed to bring in a dismal $47 million in ticket sales in the United States and Canada.
Well, it has since gotten even worse for Disney and its Marvel movies. While “The Marvels” started off with dismally low ticket sales, those have since crashed even lower, falling by 78 percent in what was the biggest second-weekend drop ever for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In fact, the disastrously bad second weekend was, like “The Marvels” coming in far below “The Hulk,” not even close to the now-second-worst second-weekend drop. That would be, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” which withstood what was the largest decline of the franchise with a 69.9 percent plummet.
“The Marvels” is doing so badly, bringing in only $10.2 million across over four thousand theaters over the second weekend, that it might not even match the opening weekend ticket sales of its predecessor, “Captain Marvel.” That film, no great success for the studio, managed to bring in a comparatively whopping $153 million. “The Marvels,” by contrast, has so far brought in only $65 million domestically and, as mentioned above, its ticket sales are falling like a rock.
If it continues its dramatic underperformance compared to other Marvel movies, then it could set yet another ignominious record: unless it manages to sell another nearly $35 million in tickets domestically, it could be the first Marvel movie ever to not make at least $100 million at the domestic box office.
The results are even worse when the budget of the film is considered: “The Marvels” apparently cost about $300 million to make and distribute. With movie theater studios keeping half of ticket sales, that means it needs to make at least $600 million to just break even for Disney. Given its poor ticket sales, both domestically and internationally, remaining in the red looks likely for “The Marvels.”
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David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research, noted that the utter disaster is “unprecedented” for the MCU, saying, “This is an unprecedented Marvel box office collapse. The strikes hurt the film’s marketing, but that’s not what’s driving these numbers.”
Gross added that the market for superhero movies is oversaturated and filled with bad material, a market problem that likely hurt “The Marvels” and explains some of its utter lack of box office success: “Since the pandemic, superhero films have endured simultaneous streaming, unimaginative and bad movies [and] saturation on TV.”