The Marvels Box Office Opening Weekend Breaks 15-Year MCU Record

:0:0

Summary

The Marvels is the third installment in Phase 5 of the MCU and a sequel to Captain Marvel.
The movie features Captain Marvel teaming up with Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan.
The Marvels is projected to have the worst opening weekend in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with an estimated gross between $47 and $52 million.

The Marvels will likely break an unfortunate record for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The movie, which is the third installment in Phase 5 of the MCU, is a sequel to 2019's Captain Marvel, which introduced Brie Larson's superpowered former fighter pilot to the franchise. The storyline sees Captain Marvel's powers becoming entangled with two others, leading her to team up with astronaut Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Avengers fangirl Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), who developed powers of their own over the course of the Disney+ shows WandaVision and Ms. Marvel.
Per Deadline, The Marvels box office is only tracking to gross a domestic opening weekend total between $47 and $52 million. This would make it the worst opening ever for a movie in the MCU, with the previous movie to hold that title being 2008's The Incredible Hulk starring Edward Norton, which is widely considered to be an early misfire for the franchise and had an opening gross of $55.4 million.
The Marvels Box Office Explained

There are a lot of factors that are most likely contributing to this grim opening weekend. One major element is the fact that the The Marvels release came just one day after the end of the Screen Actors Guild strike, which lasted for 118 days. This meant that the movie's pre-release rollout couldn't involve promotion from the cast as actors fought for fair pay, which may have significantly reduced audience awareness of the impending release.
The impact of the absence of the The Marvels cast is difficult to measure, but it could be significant considering the original Captain Marvel opened to a whopping $153.4 million. Regardless, the box office tier the movie has landed on is shockingly low, especially with its over $200 million budget. Most of the other lowest-grossing opening weekends in the MCU came from Phase 1 movies (which debuted before the Marvel boom and aren't adjusted for inflation) and 2021 titles that suffered from a pandemic-depressed box office. Check out a comparison between The Marvels and other low-grossing MCU openings below:
Year
Title
Opening Weekend
2023
The Marvels
$47-$52 million
2008
The Incredible Hulk
$55.4 million
2011
Captain America: The First Avenger
$65 million
2011
Thor
$65.7 million
2021
Eternals
$71.3 million
2021
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
$75.4 million
While this result is drastic for The Marvels, the movie does come during a period of diminishing returns for the franchise both critically and commercially. Indeed, Phase 5's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania not only has the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of any MCU movie, but also experienced the largest week 2 drop at the box office. This new movie also sees the return of Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury after appearing in the Phase 5 show Secret Invasion, which is the MCU's lowest-rated Disney+ show.
Source: Deadline
Key Release Dates