What Will the Marvel Cinematic Universe Bring in 2024? (And Will Audiences Go For It?)

A prior post here considering Marvel's potential to stage a comeback--concerned in the main with Marvel's prospects given the real problem evident after this year's string of underwhelming box office performances, that the high-concept franchise action film that has been king of the box office for decades is in decline. Still, even admitting this of the general market one might imagine Marvel managing to carry on, and even reverse the downward trend its films have been displaying at the box office.

In thinking about that it seems worth considering the movies scheduled for release in 2024.

There are three for the time being--Deadpool 3 on that critical first weekend of summer, the first of the rebooted Captain America films (Captain America: Brave New World) in late July, and The Thunderbolts in December.

How do their chances look at this very early stage of things?

There is no question that Deadpool has his fans. However, the question is whether, six years after the last Deadpool movie, audiences will be up to a third helping of the same shtick, and whether it will matter much for the overall MCU. While I admit to not having been impressed with it even the first time around, others were, and I think it plausible that at least enough of the fans will come out to make the film a success by deflated, post-pandemic standards--but even such a success has to be qualified. Deadpool actually began as part of Fox's X-Men franchise, rather than the MCU, and is very different in style and tone from the rest of the generally PG-13-rated franchise, so that it may not suffer as much as others from the Marvel brand losing some of its luster--while the same relationship to the franchise means that its success cannot help the MCU much, if it indeed becomes a success.

This matters all the more as the next two Phase Five films are far from the sure bets they might have seemed to be a few years ago. Captain America became a major success for Marvel, with 2016's Captain America: Civil War one of the MCU's earlier $1 billion+ hits, but this arrives after an eight year gap with the last Captain America movie, a five year gap with the last Captain America appearance in Avengers: Endgame, and entails a significant overhaul when the pattern is already the films' performing well below the bar set by their immediate and especially Phase Three predecessors. (I also wonder what to make of the decision to bring back Tim Blake Nelson's Samuel Sterns--recycling an element from the little-seen 2008 The Incredible Hulk. Is this, like the tie-ins with the streaming shows, a sign of a franchise wrapped up in itself expecting the general audience to show the attentiveness of the hardcore, and in the process alienating them?) The late July release date (a change of plans that came in the wake of the big Hollywood strikes of this year) may also be unhelpful. Meanwhile The Thunderbolts, in presenting another superhero team that is far from the Avengers or the X-Men in regard to name recognition, puts me in mind of the less than wholly successful The Eternals.

The result is that if the MCU manages a "comeback," I do not see it happening on the basis of its 2024 releases on the basis of the available evidence. Instead it is easier to picture the present discontents with the MCU continuing--or even these films ending up further additions to Marvel's "loss" column.