Marvel’s box office struggles may soon continue, as superhero sequel The Marvels is tracking to bring in low ticket sales, according to Box Office Pro.
The site reports that the Brie Larson, Iman Vellani, and Teyonah Parris trio film will have a disappointing domestic opening weekend that rakes in between $50-$75 million. Lifetime domestic sales are expected to garner somewhere between $121-$189 million. For comparison’s sake, the original Captain Marvel, which debuted at the height of the Marvel movie craze in 2019, opened to $153.4 million with lifetime earnings topping out at $426.8 million domestically. In other words, it looks like the Disney+ show team-up angle of The Marvels is doing little to pull audience interest amid SAG-AFTRA strikes in the industry.
Marvel and superhero films in general have mostly fallen out of favor with their usual audience members over the last few years. DC continues to be unable to catch a break with films like The Flash and Blue Beetle struggling to bookend its cinematic universe, but Marvel has found new hurdles. For example, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 pulled in a respectable but still slightly disappointing $118.4 million opening and a $358.9 million domestic total. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which was heavily criticized for its nonsensical plot and distracting visuals, only managed to pull in $106.1 million on opening weekend, with a final total of $214.5 million. It seems The Marvels may soon add to its list of losses.
Boc Office Pro notes that pre-sales for The Marvels are “alarmingly low.” These trends have the cosmic superhero movie tracking 69% behind Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, 42% behind The Eternals, and a whopping 72% behind Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. This is all especially alarming, as Disney has claimed that The Marvels cost a staggering $270 million to create, making it one of the most expensive Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies ever made. If box office estimations are accurate, Disney could have pretty significant losses on their hands.
Time will tell if these expectations pan out, but with fans seemingly unenthusiastic about The Marvels online, it’s clear that the outlook for the latest MCU entry is bleak. For all updates on Marvel’s battle to regain seemingly lost interest, be sure to stay tuned for any updates.
