Marvel has been dominating Hollywood for many years and his films continue to earn a lot of money to this day – although it is also rare that their budgets fall below 200 million dollars per title. That does not mean that there is some wear and tear in the interest of the public towards his universe of superheroes, with the particularity that his popularity was such that it is very easy to think that everything simply continues to look aft. After all, the premiere of ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ in the United States far exceeded what the first two installments did. However, everything is more complicated than it seems and even Kevin Feige has noticed her.
Feige announced just a few days ago that Marvel I was going to release fewer series and space them out more in time. The argument was that “the production rate of the Disney+ series will change so that each one has its opportunity to shine“, but the recent postponement of the arrival date in theaters of ‘The Marvels’ makes it increasingly clear that the studio is aware that public interest in its universe is waning.
A clear downward trend
There, ruling on a specific reason is complicated, but Phase 4 of Marvel has been the most criticized by difference and it is hard to think that this is not due in part to the significant accumulation of titles in a fairly short period of time. This has reduced its status as an event and with movies it is increasingly common to see people commenting that they are going to wait to see them on Disney +, a platform that we must not forget that still continues to produce multimillion-dollar losses.
If we look at the box office results of the latest Marvel movies, the easiest thing to do would be to conclude that they have all been successful. ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ went up to 955 million dollars, ‘Thor: Love & Thunder’ stayed at 760 million and ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ amassed 855 million. Very respectable figures, but things change a bit if we go into the details.
For example, ‘Black Panther’ was an unrepeatable phenomenon which raised 1,346 million less than 5 years ago, which represents a drop of almost 500 million from the first to the second installment. Of course, then it could be argued that ‘Doctor Strange’ only made 677 million and that there the advantage is clear for the sequel, but let’s not forget that at the same time it worked as a continuation of ‘Scarlet Witch and Vision’, surely the series of Most popular Marvel so far.
In fact, in last year’s releases there would be a clear downward trend if it weren’t for the fact that the ‘Black Panther’ franchise is especially popular in the United States, since there the first installment even managed to surpass ‘Avengers: Infinity War’. All in all, the drop at the box office with the second is undeniable and ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ has confirmed that downward trend with a debut below all of the studio’s 2022 films.
In addition, ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantuamania’ adds another worrying fact, since it is the first Marvel movie to hit Chinese theaters simultaneously with its world premiere and it has played at the box office there. Let’s remember that ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ earned 66.6 million dollars during its first weekend in that country, a figure that has dropped drastically to 19.1 million achieved by the third installment of the saga led by paul rudd.
Other reasons for concern
To that we must add the bad reviewssomething unusual in the case of Marvel -‘Eternals’ was the only film of his with a bad score on RottenTomatoes to date-, but there is also another detail that makes it clear that the public has not been very satisfied: ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ has barely gotten a B in Cinemascore polls among those viewers who saw it in the United States. Until now, ‘Eternals’ was the only one that had had such a low grade and the movie of Chloe Zhao it’s the closest Marvel has come so far to an outright box office flop. That B was also what “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” received at the time, the DC movie that swept its first week and then its box office ended up being disappointing due to its abrupt drop from its second weekend. week in theaters
All of this is particularly worrisome. because ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ was being sold as a key film for the future of Marvel, since its function went far beyond being the start of Phase 5. Feige himself made it clear these days that it was Marvel’s most important work since ‘Avengers: Endgame’ in terms of the great plot that this universe of superheroes tells.
Obviously, with all this I do not want to say that Marvel is going through a serious crisis and that it was obliged to do something to straighten the course, but there was a downward trend that Disney could not allow it to go further with the great jewel in the crown. And the proposed solution seems to have been to slow down to try to recover the feeling that all its premieres are events instead of seeing many of them as movies or series that one simply has to see to see how it advances the plot of this universe. . Even Feige has realized that and he doesn’t want the public to think that you have to do your homework before seeing the movie that really appeals to you…
Now we will have to see how the subsequent releases work. From the streaming series we already know that we are not going to get reliable and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy 3’ is a particular case, since it is the only franchise within Marvel with such a marked identity of its own that it works perfectly in isolation, something we have to thank James Gunn. Therefore, Feige has already gained some time, it will be necessary to see if he manages to change the trend before he really loses the favor of the public and that this small bump does not become a huge sinkhole.
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