If one would be asked to name a huge successful franchise, the MCU will surely be an answer as it dominated the cinemas over the years, especially during Phase 3 with Infinity War and Endgame bringing almost every person on Earth in theaters to witness the culmination of Marvel Studios' work. However, much like the rest of the whole world, the pandemic has hit the franchise hard that even if it managed to produce some projects, it never reached its peak again. Recently, The Marvels suffered a huge blow with its poor performance and Disney CEO Bob Iger reveals a possible reason why that happened.
The Marvels is the third MCU movie to come out this year with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania first, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 as the second. Seemingly following some pattern, Quantumania did not fare better while GoTG Vol. 3 did a good job, then, The Marvels hit rock bottom as the lowest opening box office weekend in the history of the MCU in 15 years. Disney CEO Bob Iger offers an explanation as to why this poor performance happened to The Marvels when he spoke during the NYT DealBook Summit 2023 (via The Verge). Iger said, "The Marvels was shot during COVID, and there wasn't enough supervision on set [from executives.]"
Various factors that the audience considered that affected the poor performance of The Marvels were the recent SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes which prohibited the stars from talking about their upcoming projects, and thus, the lack of publicity; or the weird hatred lodged on sexism having three powerful women take charge. Instead, Iger blamed the executives' lack of oversight over the content and its quality.
Will there be another The Marvels movie?
Considering how The Marvels fared with its theatrical performance, it is quite unlikely to have another The Marvels movie. However, that does not mean that the characters would not return in other projects. The Marvels already set up where the three main characters would be in the MCU timeline and through this, they could appear in other MCU movies that are about to arrive in the near future.
The ending of The Marvels revealed that Captain Marvel remained on Hala to help the people there, Kamala Khan was on Earth and seemingly building up the Young Avengers, and Monica Rambeau was in another reality where her mother didn't know her, and X-Men's Beast was there. The most possible movies they could have a reunion would be in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars.
The Marvels is still in theaters worldwide.
