The Marvel Cinematic Universe is known to be one of the biggest franchises in existence today with its number of high grossing films of all time. At a point, the franchise held the top spot with Endgame as the highest grossing film of all time until it was defeated by Avatar after its re-release. Unfortunately, the MCU could not have it all as The Marvels blew the record being the worst opening box office of the MCU in 15 years.
Since the predictions came out on how The Marvels would perform in the box office, it was not always a top billed film to break the box office unlike previous MCU releases like Infinity War and Endgame. In fact, the predictions for the box office of The Marvels were already low but when it actually came out in theaters, the movie did not really do well with only $47 million domestically. As per a report from The Numbers data site, the opening box office weekend of The Marvels secured the lowest among all the 33 MCU movies up to date.
The $47 million opening box office of The Marvels makes it the worst in the MCU as it sits below the $55.4 million of The Incredible Hulk and $57.2 million of Ant-Man whose numbers are yet to be adjusted for inflation. The international box office is not at its best, too, as The Marvels only got $63 million globally, making the total of the opening gross around $110.3 million only. This does not look good for the Marvel Cinematic Universe especially with the budget of The Marvels sitting on $274.8 million.
Why did The Marvels fail its opening weekend?
There are a lot of possible reasons why The Marvels hit a brick wall with its opening box office gross. First, there exists the so-called "Marvel fatigue" which describes the significant decline in the viewership of Marvel titles. Factors include the death of the MCU momentum after the Infinity Saga, the over-saturation of the MCU in the market which makes it "too available" that the audience started to get tired of it, or the complexity of the situation ever since the pandemic hit. The reviews of The Marvels from the critics were fluctuating and it may have missed the mark that the fans are looking for in a new Marvel movie.
Second, there is the lack of the promotion of the movie because of the actors' strike. Just a few months before The Marvels released, the SAG-AFTRA strike started which prohibited the actors to market their present projects and that may have hurt the performance of The Marvels in theaters. While the strike ended recently, the time was not enough for The Marvels cast to market the movie in time for its opening weekend.
Third, the release strategy of Disney may not have worked well for The Marvels. See, The Marvels' release in theaters was preceded by another MCU project, the finale of Loki Season 2 which came out two days before the movie. While it was not intended by Loki Season 2 to overshadow The Marvels, the finale of the series got positive reviews which had the fans talking about it over the past few days instead of The Marvels. This release strategy could have affected The Marvels' performance because two cannot share the spotlight at once and it seems that Loki Season 2 finale has won over the attention of the fans.
The Marvels is currently in theaters worldwide.
