Summary
- The Marvels is facing a potential box office opening setback, which could be detrimental to the major MCU players making their big screen debut in the film.
- The film's pre-sales are tracking poorly compared to other MCU films, suggesting a lack of enthusiasm from fans.
- Possible reasons for the film's poor tracking include competition from other movies, a negative trend in post-Endgame MCU performance, and a lack of promotion due to an ongoing strike. However, positive test screenings provide some hope for a rebound.
As The Marvels inches closer, early signs indicate a worrying box office opening for the project and a major bump in the road for some of the major MCU players making their big screen debut in the movie.
The Marvels is a sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel and a continuation of the 2022 Disney Plus series Ms. Marvel. It also has to bridge the relationships between Captain Marvel and allies Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau, both making their big-screen debut in the film after debuting in the MCU on Disney Plus. While the film is a bit unconventional for the MCU, Ms. Marvel's Disney Plus series on Disney Plus helped set up the film with its final episode teaser, and adult Rambeau was introduced to the wider MCU in WandaVision. Despite two other stars joining as co-leads, leading lady Brie Larson was excited about Captain Marvel's next adventure in the sequel.
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Unfortunately, fans don’t seem to share the enthusiasm for the film, with The Marvels trailer being the MCU's most disliked on YouTube, and there’s even more bad news on the horizon. According to an analysis by the reference publication Box Office Pro, The Marvels is already tracking poorly by MCU standards, with the pre-sales for the film “currently 69 percent behind the pace of Guardians Vol. 3, 72 percent behind Quantumania, and 42 percent behind Eternals." Furthermore, the forecast given for The Marvels domestic total sits between $121 million on the low end and about $189 million on the high end, a far cry from the first film’s $426.8 million domestic and 1.13 billion global, and also lower than the film’s reported budget.
The publication highlights some likely reasons why The Marvels is tracking so poorly, with one of the more optimistic potential stopgaps being the Taylor Swift Eras Tour movie playing in select theaters and temporarily holding up The Marvels pre-sales, which should start coming in after the concert movie concludes its run. Less optimistically, the site points to the first film’s success being bolstered by proximity to Avengers: Endgame and highlights a negative trend for the MCU's post-Endgame performance, especially after Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Also on the list of reasons is the lack of promotion from the film’s stars due to the terms of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike action.
After the lousy performance of Ant-Man 3 and its negative effect on the performance of the otherwise well-received Guardians Vol. 3, The Marvels has a lot to make up for at the box office. The film’s box office performance will also depend on how it fares against The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Wish in the weeks immediately following its release, with no clear indication of how that’ll play out. There's also a lot of pressure on the film narratively because The Marvels needs to explore the main characters' relationships with depth while delivering action and a sense of scale that properly ties into the rest of the MCU.
While things look bleak regarding box office potential, there is still hope that the film rebounds from the slow start, as reports of shockingly positive test screenings for The Marvels have been making the rounds. If the film does resonate with fans to that degree, then the possibility that word of mouth bolsters its performance isn’t too far-fetched. This is all speculation, and fans must wait and see how things will play out.
The Marvels is set for theatrical release on November 10, 2023.
Source: Box Office Pro