Captain Marvel 2 vs. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Captain Marvel 2's Likely Box Office

In the wake of Boxoffice Pro's announcement of its tracking data-based projections for the domestic opening weekend and overall run of Captain Marvel 2 the figures have been making the rounds of the "armchair movie executive"-oriented entertainment news outlets. Given that the figures suggest the movie's performing much less like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Phase Three-released original Captain Marvel than they do The Flash (with an opening weekend in the $50-$75 million range and an overall run in the $120-$190 million range, vs. the half-billion dollar hit that first film was in today's terms), there has not been much room for even the most grade-on-a-curve-minded of the claqueurs of the entertainment press to pretend this is anything like good news for the movie. (Indeed, "abysmal" reads the headline at one such site.)

Since I had weeks ago suggested that the movie might be the MCU's equivalent of the DCEU's The Flash this was not exactly a shock to me--but I admit that there was some room for people to think otherwise, and not simply because they were cleaving to old predictions like Screen Rant's guess back in January.* One reason is Guardians of the Galaxy 3's performance this past summer, which it seems worthwhile to revisit.

In raising the matter of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 one should start by acknowledging that the movie did not buck the trend of MCU films making less (in inflation-adjusted, real terms) than their immediate series predecessors--the movie making a good deal less than Guardians of the Galaxy 2, as against the quarter-to-half drop seen with the other movies. However, in comparison with the latest Thor, Black Panther, Ant-Man films, it held up rather better--the drop about 20 percent relative to Guardians of the Galaxy 2. This could have been taken as meaning Captain Marvel 2 might not do too badly relative to its own high-performing predecessor. However, there were at least four significant differences undermining any such analogy (which was why, even months ago, I did not see Captain Marvel 2 breaking $700 million, let alone a billion):

1. Considering the case of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 it is worth remembering that the film was initially seen as a disappointment--its opening weekend gross softer than anticipated (a rough one-third drop from what its predecessor managed domestically). However, the film turned out to have surprisingly good "legs"--better than its predecessor (so that where the second Guardians movie made 2.65 times its opening weekend gross, Guardians 3 more than tripled the take from its first three days), implying a particularly strong audience response. That suggested that a film audiences liked might do a bit better than some of those that had gone before it, but it could not be taken for granted that this would happen with other Marvel movies (while, again, the film still ended up with 20 percent less grossed than its predecessor).

2. Just as Guardians of the Galaxy 3 proved an exception in its good legs, making it a questionable point of comparison for Captain Marvel 2, the first Captain Marvel was also an outlier--as it was released in the most fortuitous possible circumstances for such a movie. Not only did it come out during the MCU's Phase Three, but it came out mere weeks before the absolute peak of the franchise with the release of Avengers: Endgame, maximizing interest; while the claims made for the film as a "social justice first," if redounding less to the film's benefit than did the similar claims for Black Panther a year earlier, probably helping as well. The result was an exceptional boost to the film which must be credited with helping it become a $1 billion+ hit. Their absence (because Phase Five is a long way from Phase Three, because a sequel is by definition not a "first"), which makes the film less of an event, means that the drop can be expected to be that much sharper here--hence my use of Black Panther rather than the other Marvel films as a basis for my own projection (though going by the current numbers even that may have been overoptimistic).

3. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 had the benefit of considerable good will toward Guardians of the Galaxy 2, whereas Captain Marvel left audiences divided. A Rotten Tomatoes score may have its limitations as an indicator of audience feeling, especially as the claims of a campaign against the film led to the changes in its tabulation of general audience input, but all the same, where Guardians of the Galaxy 2 had an audience score of 87 percent, Captain Marvel had, and has, a mere 45 percent.

4. Captain Marvel 2's promotion has suffered from significant weaknesses. There has already been a delay of the release date (the movie bumped from July to November), connected with claims about reshoots and questionable VFX work (which was a problem for Ant-Man 3), none of which is ever encouraging. The film's budget has recently been treated as something of a scandal (unfairly, I think, but it happened all the same). An early trailer, perhaps reflecting the belated VFX work, made the movie look cheap by MCU standards, and if a later trailer made a more favorable impression that way some damage was probably done. There is also the promise that this will be a relatively goofy MCU movie--an approach that smacks of "tired franchise," and probably did not help Thor 4. The fact of a tie-in with Ms. Marvel may not be helpful (given that the general audience that makes big grosses possible does not want things to get so intricate and sprawling as to require complex investment), while the attempt to broaden the audience by airing the show on the Disney-owned ABC broadcast network so much more widely accessible than Disney Plus has not been a great success. And amid the continuation of the actors' strike the actors have been less visible "on the media circuit," and may remain so, to the film's disadvantage. I cannot see any comparison between this collection of troubles, and the promotional effort for Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (which still produced that film's weak opening weekend).

In the face of all that one might still have hoped that Guardians of the Galaxy 3's relatively good reception was indicative of, and conducive to, warmer feeling toward the Marvel brand, and that Captain Marvel 2 would derive some benefit from that--but if it has done that it has not happened in anywhere near the degree that it would need to do to make the movie anything but a flop-in-the-making, at least going by what we see at the moment.

* Screen Rant projected that Captain Marvel 2 would make $950 million in January--while also guessing Ant-Man 3 would be a $1 billion hit, and Guardians of the Galaxy 3 take in $1.2 billion. Alas, all that seems very far away now.