In the End, Just How Did Captain Marvel 2 Do at the Box Office?

According to Variety The Marvels is now available on Apple+ and Amazon Prime--scarcely two months after it hit theaters.

How has the movie fared up to now? Going by the pattern I had seen with the preceding four Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films I had noticed that their global grosses dropped 20 to 50 percent in inflation-adjusted terms relative to the prior film in their series (Thor 4 vs. Thor 3, etc.). Out of that lot Captain Marvel 2 seemed most comparable to Black Panther 2 (as a movie that, following up a sequel released near the peak of excitement about the MCU, and paralleling it in other ways, and which enjoyed exceptional success accordingly) its drop would be nearer the high end of the range--so I guessed that, given the $1.4 billion to which the first Captain Marvel's gross ($1.13 billion) amounted in mid-2023 dollars, the final take would be in the range of $600-$700 million.

Of course, the year went on becoming less and less kind to franchise films like this one at the box office--and a lot went wrong for The Marvels, not least the promotion proving exceptionally weak (unhelped by lackluster trailers). The result was that tracking-based estimates a month before the movie's release suggested something far lower--Boxoffice Pro projecting a domestic gross in the $120-$190 million range, from which I extapolated a global gross in the $250-$500 million range. Alas, over that remaining month this already low expectation all but collapsed, with not just the $190 million looking less and less likely, but even the $120 million, which came to look like ceiling rather than floor for the range with Boxoffice Pro's last long-range forecast lowering the estimate to $85-$125 million.

As it happened, the movie made just under $85 million in North America at last check (roughly equal to what the first Captain Marvel had made only partway through the film's second day in release)--and another $121 million globally, leaving it with a total of $206 million grossed (about equal to what the first movie made in North America in about its first week).*

This was a fall not of 50 percent, but of 85 percent, an absolutely catastrophic collapse that had the movie grossing less than even the notoriously catastrophic The Flash. Indeed, to call The Marvels the Solo of the Marvel Cinematic Universe can seem to understate the disaster. (After all, that movie made almost $400 million back in the summer of 2018, which is more like a half billion today--the kind of sum that Marvel can only fantasize this one made, much as they would have seen that as a grave disappointment.)

This does not guarantee the movie the top spot in Deadline's inevitable list of the year's worst flops--but I think it safe to expect it still making the top five, even in this wretched year.

* The original Captain Marvel collected $115 million by the end of Saturday, and $215 million in the first eight days of its North American run--without adjustment for inflation (in which case the figures become $139 million and $259 million, respectively).