Disney (and others) at the Box Office - Current State of Affairs

[BuddyThomas]

Sunday update from Deadline:

The Marvels. The film is posting a weekend at the bottom of yesterday’s estimates with $47M, the lowest ever for Disney‘s Marvel Cinematic Universe. Don’t blame the running time as The Marvels clocks in at 97 minutes versus other MCU pics which have runtimes over 2 1/2 hours. The Marvel‘s Saturday was $15.3M, -30% against previews/Friday of $21.5M. Worldwide, per Nancy who’ll have an update soon, is at $110M, which is also a bottom rung for the MCU and below the $140M we were forecasting.

Throw yourself a party.

 

[Ghost93]

Looks like a sizable part of the general audience treated Guardians 3 as the end of the MCU road. A number of us speculated that might be the case, but I don’t know if anybody expected the drop off to be this fast and this severe.

Marvels is going to make something like a little more than half the opening weekend of Quantumania, a movie that also underperformed. So what’s that say about The Marvels?

2023 is the year the superhero fever broke so what’s Disney going to pivot to? Underperforming SW entries? General audiences can’t wait for that, I’m sure.

It could be too late to fix the MCU, but the only possible silver lining of The Marvels tanking is that it should be a much-needed wake-up call for Kevin Feige/Bob Iger not to greenlight projects until they have a perfect script.

Many recent MCU movies and shows have had their budgets balloon due to extensive reshoots. Those reshoots wouldn't be so necessary if the scripts were great in the first place. The reshoots are also why the VFX artists have so little time to make the special effects convincing.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 and Across the Spider-verse show that audiences will still show up for a superhero movie if it is good. But audiences will no longer show up to a superhero movie just because it's the only thing playing in theaters.

 

[Casper Gutman]

Superhero movies are DEAD! (Pay no attention to the fact that 3 of the top 10 films of the year are superhero films, and 2 of the top 4!)

Now certainly we will get those wonderful examples of True Cinema superhero films were blocking and not a wave of awful movies based on toy lines and video games that will make superhero films like masterpieces.

By the way, and with all due respect, I'd still very much like to clarity on TalkingHead's "meta-narrative" comment with some examples.

 

[Chi84]

By the way, and with all due respect, I'd still very much like to clarity on TalkingHead's "meta-narrative" comment with some examples.

I don’t think that topic is allowed here. All the posts mentioning it were deleted. I’d like to know too, but that judgment call is up to the moderators.

 

[Casper Gutman]

I don’t think that topic is allowed here. All the posts mentioning it were deleted. I’d like to know too, but that judgment call is up to the moderators.

I'd hope that if we kept a respectful tone, asking for clarity would be acceptable. However, I'll retract the question if it's too divisive.

 

[TalkingHead]

It could be too late to fix the MCU, but the only possible silver lining of The Marvels tanking is that it should be a much-needed wake-up call for Kevin Feige/Bob Iger not to greenlight projects until they have a perfect script.

Many recent MCU movies and shows have had their budgets balloon due to extensive reshoots. Those reshoots wouldn't be so necessary if the scripts were great in the first place. The reshoots are also why the VFX artists have so little time to make the special effects convincing.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 and Across the Spider-verse show that audiences will still show up for a superhero movie if it is good. But audiences will no longer show up to a superhero movie just because it's the only thing playing in theaters.

Those movies succeeded in part because one was the end of the story, ostensibly, and the other was an event based on the gimmick of bringing the different actors together in one movie.

Those aren’t replicable qualities for random Marvel feature #39. The problem is the stars and characters associated with Marvel’s heyday are no longer part of the cycle, and they’re so deep into the franchise at this point that casual viewers feel like they can’t jump in at will. The Marvels abandoned some money simply because it has the reputation of a movie that wouldn’t make sense if you haven’t already seen 20+ movies/series.

Barbie, Super Mario, Oppie, Maverick, *all* of those films were accessible to general audiences. MCU simply isn’t that anymore.

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

I don’t think the MCU is dead but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it paused, like Star Wars, while they figure out the next step.

The overall storyline should be the focus, without the interconnected story like the infinity stones I don’t think it’ll ever find the same success it had before, they should probably limit releases to a couple a year also, a new Marvel movie ever quarter is too much to consistently draw massive audiences.

 

[Animaniac93-98]

I don’t think the MCU is dead but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it paused, like Star Wars, while they figure out the next step.

The overall storyline should be the focus, without the interconnected story like the infinity stones I don’t think it’ll ever find the same success it had before, they should probably limit releases to a couple a year also,

They should have realized they'll never top Endgame, but the lesson they took away from that movie's success was that people wanted more Marvel ASAP, no matter what, not that Endgame was the payoff to years of careful built up and genuine anticipation.

a new Marvel movie ever quarter is too much to consistently draw massive audiences.

Except this is a major component of the company's business strategy, so it will be difficult to pivot from this.

They don't know what to do besides Marvel, live-action remakes and 2 animated films a year.

 

[TP2000]

First round box office data for this weekend is in. Things might get adjusted by 500K or so by tomorrow, but this is what the box office looked like this weekend. The Marvels made approximately $47 Million since previews started Thursday evening.

 

[TP2000]

And here is how The Marvels opening weekend box office stacks up to the other 3 mega-budget superhero movies of 2023. This serves as a reminder that The Marvels had the largest budget of 2023's Marvel movies. Why???

For those who have seen it, why would they need a $275 Million production budget for a 95 minute movie? That seems like really bad management, if you ask me.

'The Marvels' has the worst opening weekend ever for any MCU film at $47 million

"The Marvels" generated an estimated $47 million domestically over its debut weekend, the lowest in franchise history.

www.cnbc.com

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

The sequel also faltered overseas, where it debuted to $63.3 million for a global start of $110 million compared to nearly $190 million for 'Captain Marvel' in 2019.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

 

[erasure fan1]

Except this is a major component of the company's business strategy, so it will be difficult to pivot from this.

That's exactly it. I see no situation where Disney pauses the MCU. Let's say the marvels ends up only doing $100mil for its entire run, they still wouldn't pause anything. It's too important to the company. The best we can hope for is they find an intriguing story that allows them to tie things together. Of course that's much easier said than done.

They will do a soft reboot similar to what DC is trying to do. They'll probably try to bring back some OG favorites to restart things. But I highly doubt they give it the proper time that is needed. What Feige did in the infinity saga is one of the greatest accomplishments in cinema history. That's going to make turning this ship even more challenging.

 

[Joel]

Disney's parks may print money, but they don't print so much that they can hold out much longer waiting for the "new audience" to show up to their movies. X-Men can't -- actually, won't -- come soon enough.

Hopefully the decision-makers have the capability to show a little more introspection than some of the folks here.

 

[Casper Gutman]

Disney's parks may print money, but they don't print so much that they can hold out much longer waiting for the "new audience" to show up to their movies. X-Men can't -- actually, won't -- come soon enough.

Hopefully the decision-makers have the capability to show a little more introspection than some of the folks here.

What sort of introspection do you mean?

Why does everyone feel the need to be so vague? How does that facilitate discussion?

 

[_caleb]

I’ve been asking numerous users why this film hasn’t reached as broad an audience as other similar films. If anyone showed up, it’s the guys.

Can someone explain to me why women have eschewed this film? Can you?

I'll venture a guess: I think it's not strictly about the story or the characters or even the actors, but about the larger conversation around superhero movies.

The Marvel fandom is aggressively hostile. Nevermind Twitter, read through the comments on these boards (and note how many posts have been removed). Nothing says "welcome!" like dripping sarcasm, nerd rage, mocking, belittling, and meanspirited debate. I think the Snydergate and Fandom Menace had a bigger influence on geekier films like those of the MCU than people might think.

Word of mouth has been really bad in general (and for Larson in particular), mostly driven by people who pre-judged The Marvels as a convergence of all their grievances against Disney/Marvel/the world. See how many have been predicting for months that this would bomb and those who gleefully post box office data.

Movies like The Marvels are being treated as avatars for social and political ideologies. [Edited to remove examples of this.] I could see how a casual fan might hear all this stuff and decide to skip this one.

As others have mentioned, the MCU is a tangled mess of storytelling. It probably doesn't seem accessible anymore, and the D+ series only added to the sense that making sense of a new Marvel film requires lots of homework.

And in general, moviegoing trends are changing. Some will wait and see it on Disney+ (which is still a new thing but rarely gets factored into discussion about box office numbers). Yes, there have been some successful movies recently, but it seems like in general, the studios can't figure out how to reliably get people to come out (despite how easy some here insist it should be).

I'm not saying these are all equal. Some might even be minor. But at the end of the day, there isn't one single reason that the Marvels isn't doing well or that women might not be flooding the theaters for this one.

 

[_caleb]

At this point I think any kind of introspection would be useful.

There have been theories bandied about here for months that were laughable even without the benefit of hindsight but are so clearly ridiculous now that there's hardly any point in discussing them further. The "new audience" for these bombs doesn't exist and never will, at least not in a quantity large enough to make them commercially viable while any of us here are still alive. The idea that "golly, it's just literally impossible to tell stories with nearly universal appeal anymore!" and thus Disney's only option is to make movies that appeal to, apparently, almost no one is such a joke that I hope it's just really bad excuse-making fanfic and not an intentional strategy being pursued by Disney leadership. The notion that Disney executives are simply following the data... off the cliff with one box office disappointment after another with, by far, the most valuable collection of IPs on the planet? It's all just beyond belief.

Yet I don't see anyone who's been promoting these theories pausing for even a moment to reconsider (not that I expect anyone to). Hopefully Disney execs are, though, whatever assumptions and strategies they're actually operating under.

As someone who has articulated some of this, I've got to ask, what's the alternative?

If the MCU was just fine as it was, raking in billions from stories with universal appeal, why did they ignore all the supporting data you think exists, deviate from the formula, and squander IP at the cost of billions?

 

[Disney Irish]

Another factor which barely gets brought up is ticket price. Taking a family out to the movies these days is an expensive endeavor. And with several other movies including the Swift concert movie doing well, there isn't enough money left over for an unsure MCU movie on opening weekend. I mean notice how no other movie really competed this weekend either.

So I think there are many factors to why opening weekend isn't as stellar as previous MCU movies. We'll see if it turns around in the weeks to come like Elemental did, or if it just ends up just not performing well overall.

 

[Chi84]

I thought we were told not to discuss politics/social issues in this thread.

 

[Tony the Tigger]

As someone who has articulated some of this, I've got to ask, what's the alternative?

If the MCU was just fine as it was, raking in billions from stories with universal appeal, why did they ignore all the supporting data you think exists, deviate from the formula, and squander IP at the cost of billions?

Actors age out. Robert Downey, Jr. is 58 and abused his body for years.

Actors get tired of the same role over and over, no matter how successful.

Actors sue studios and maybe the studios aren't so jazzed to work with them anymore.

Studios see all that writing on the wall and use the opportunity to keep things fresh, and to develop new characters and storylines rather than just recast the old roles and start over. Another Batman. Another Spider Man. There's not even enough time between reboots. But simple people want to be spoon fed the same thing over and over, despite decrying the lack of originality.

"Oh, no! IP! No new ideas!" Well, these are newer ideas with fresh faces. Sorry they're not exactly like the old faces.

 

[_caleb]

I thought we were told not to discuss politics/social issues in this thread.

I thought that referring to the social/political reactions by audiences would be ok. I've edited my post to remove the specific examples I used to illustrate my point.

 

[Tha Realest]

I'll venture a guess: I think it's not strictly about the story or the characters or even the actors, but about the larger conversation around superhero movies.

The Marvel fandom is aggressively hostile. Nevermind Twitter, read through the comments on these boards (and note how many posts have been removed). Nothing says "welcome!" like dripping sarcasm, nerd rage, mocking, belittling, and meanspirited debate. I think the Snydergate and Fandom Menace had a bigger influence on geekier films like those of the MCU than people might think.

Word of mouth has been really bad in general (and for Larson in particular), mostly driven by people who pre-judged The Marvels as a convergence of all their grievances against Disney/Marvel/the world. See how many have been predicting for months that this would bomb and those who gleefully post box office data.

Movies like The Marvels are being treated as avatars for social and political ideologies. [Edited to remove examples of this.] I could see how a casual fan might hear all this stuff and decide to skip this one.

As others have mentioned, the MCU is a tangled mess of storytelling. It probably doesn't seem accessible anymore, and the D+ series only added to the sense that making sense of a new Marvel film requires lots of homework.

And in general, moviegoing trends are changing. Some will wait and see it on Disney+ (which is still a new thing but rarely gets factored into discussion about box office numbers). Yes, there have been some successful movies recently, but it seems like in general, the studios can't figure out how to reliably get people to come out (despite how easy some here insist it should be).

I'm not saying these are all equal. Some might even be minor. But at the end of the day, there isn't one single reason that the Marvels isn't doing well or that women might not be flooding the theaters for this one.

I appreciate your thoughtful response and engagement. I really do. I think if there was a simple answer or solution that would make things easier for all concerned.

It just seems odd to lay the blame on this film’s perceived failure on men, or toxic men, when men appear to have done their part.

Implicit in broadening and growing an audience is that the audience reciprocates, no? If, for example, Deadpool 3 casts Taylor Swift in something slightly more than a cameo, then those producers/creators would expect at least some of the Swifties that had never considered seeing a superhero movie would show up?