Now Boxoffice Pro has made public its tracking numbers--domestic numbers only, of course, but these are still important and telling, and I will discuss these first before I go onto the worldwide gross figure that was my original concern.
Right now Boxoffice Pro projects an opening weekend in the $50-$75 million range, and a gross in the $121-$189 million range.
Yikes.
After all, at the low end of the range these really are Flash-like numbers (that movie having taken in $55 million on its opening weekend, and gone on to a $108 million gross in its entire run), while the high end of the range is not very much better (more like what was hoped for The Flash in the weeks before its release, even after the delusions about its being the greatest superhero film ever fell apart).
I think this makes the point--but in the interests of thoroughness let us compare these numbers with what the original Captain Marvel made back in the spring of 2019. That movie opened to $153 million, and had a domestic run in the $427 million range--or $185 million in its opening weekend and $517 million in its overall run in September 2023 dollars, respectively.
This works out to the current expectation being that the movie will, in inflation-adjusted, real, terms, open 59 to 73 percent lower than the original, and eventually pull in 63 to 77 percent less; that, in other words, it will be lucky to make two-fifths what the original Captain Marvel did, and may make just one-quarter what it did, domestically.
By comparison Black Panther 2 made a bit over half what the first Black Panther did globally in real terms--which means that the current projection for Captain Marvel 2 is that even at the high end of the range it will suffer a significantly worse drop relative to its immediate series predecessor than any of the recent Marvel Cinematic Universe films, while in absolute terms hauling in even less than Ant-Man 3 (which was being called a flop with some $214 million in the till, over an eighth more than the best projected for this movie).
In fairness, a movie might find some compensation overseas for its domestic underperformance--but given this shortfall the compensation would have to be positively enormous for this movie, and this is not how things have been working out lately for the MCU, or for Hollywood generally. Indeed, the international market has often been the problem--this a much more significant factor in Ant-Man 3's overall performance than its domestic underperformance.
Let us thus take the domestic/international split the original Captain Marvel managed as a relatively optimistic scenario, especially since no recent Marvel release has managed to make quite so much of its money in the international markets--roughly 38/62 according to Box Office Mojo. This works out to a multiplier of 2.65, which applied to the $189 million gross that is Boxoffice Pro's high estimate has the movie, in this positive scenario, barely cracking $500 million. Applied to the low end of the range it finishes up with about $320 million. And should the movie manage to do only relatively as well overseas as, say, Black Panther 2 did (with a 53/47 split), with this applied to the $121 million figure, this would amount to $230 million--less than The Flash (and a fifth of the $1.13 billion Captain Marvel made before adjustment for inflation).
Of course, we still have a month to go--but as has been seen time and again with franchise films this year BoxOfficePro's projections have tended to trend downward rather than upward in the case of such films in the weeks preceding their release (this certainly the case with The Flash, Indiana Jones 5, lesser disappointments like Mission: Impossible 7, etc.)--while reading Boxoffice Pro's commentary I was struck by the use of the phrase "alarmingly low" in relation to its pre-sales, which the site informs us are not just "69 percent behind the pace of Guardians Vol. 3," but also 72 percent behind [Ant-Man 3], and 42 percent behind Eternals" at present. (Eternals!) The result is that by the week of the movie's release the prognosis might be still worse than it is now--while even if it got no worse than it is at present there is no way to see this as anything but a prediction of disaster for this film, and another big blow to an already badly tottering MCU, and along with it, the badly tottering superhero genre, Hollywood franchise action film and "blockbuster" generally, and Hollywood studio system altogether.
2 comments:
I do find it interesting that, in a time when franchise films are time and time again failing to gain traction, that non-franchise films seem to be doing better (like Barbie and Oppenheimer). Though even this isn’t universally true (The Creator being an example, it bombed pretty hard despite decent reviews), I wonder if people in general are really just fed up with sequels and remakes, regardless of their quality or lack thereof.
I would also like to add that a lot of the reasoning behind the view of a so-called “lack of creativity “ in Hollywood, is more to do with its business model of profit margins than anything else. Honestly there are probably hundreds of scripts, hundreds of original ideas out there, but the big business isn’t willing to get behind them for monetary reasons. It’s a shame, really. I still hold out some hope though, what with the strikes and all the pushback against these franchises and everything else.
Hi Dominic. Thanks for writing.
The pattern of successes like Barbie and Oppenheimer as "old, reliable" franchises fail is certainly striking-and no less even if there are films like The Creator. (Even in the most vibrant market, not all films, even worthy ones, can be expected to be commercial successes-especially when movies cost so much to make, raising the bar of success so high.) And I certainly agree that we are seeing is not what writers are creating, or capable of creating, so much as what the studio system is willing to fund.
Considering the possibility of a change I find myself thinking of the "New Hollywood" of the '60s and '70s, when the old way of doing things was failing, newer and less conventional projects were becoming hits, and the studios gave some of the artists a little more room-with some good results in the view of most critics and historians. The way so many movies are failing may push the studios in that direction eventually-but going by the comments of people like Disney's Iger and Warner Bros.' Zaslav for now it looks like the executives' resistance is still very strong, and any change, if it can happen, at least some ways off.
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