According to studio projections on Sunday, “The Marvels” made only $47 million in its first weekend at the box office, falling short in domestic sales.
The 2008 release “The Incredible Hulk,” which debuted at just over $55 million, is the studio’s best-performing movie, according to Comscore data, with this most recent Marvel endeavor coming in second.
Despite the fact that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded significantly since its launch in the late 2000s, “The Marvels” is just the third Marvel film to debut with a gross of less than $60 million; the first was “Ant-Man” in 2015, which made $57 million.
As noted by BoxOffice Pro’s Chief Analyst Shawn Robbins, “Marvel has historically seen most of its films benefit from goodwill, but in a post-Infinity Saga world, their own standards mean audiences have higher and higher expectations.”
Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at Comscore, proposes that the film’s reception calls for a pause to consider the superhero genre and encourages taking inspiration from popular, risk-taking movies like “Logan,” “Deadpool,” and “Joker.”
On Disney+, “The Marvels” also aims to expand upon the narratives and characters from Marvel television spinoffs, such as “WandaVision” and “Ms. Marvel.” But according to Robbins, these 2020-launched performances might have “backfired on the goal to expand the brand.”
Experts blame the disappointing first showings of “The Marvels” on broader studio issues from the past few years, such as conflicting reviews for some of Marvel’s most anticipated movies and a relatively stifled launch for the multiverse plot.
The Infinity Saga sequel “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which debuted in November 2022, made over four times as much money in its first weekend of release in the United States as “The Marvels,” with a total of over $181.3 million.
“The Marvels” may have led the box office this weekend, but “Five Nights at Freddy’s” brought in $9 million, the second-highest total. This video game-based film, which Peacock customers can also see online, has to contend with the possibility that some moviegoers may become disinterested due to streaming.
According to Dergarabedian, “Today’s audiences, with myriad entertainment options on screens big and small, are looking for something unique, edgy, or simply so well-written and flat out entertaining that they can’t resist heading out to the multiplex.”
