Revisiting Screen Rant's Box Office Forecasts for 2023's Superhero Films

Recently revisiting the matter of the box office performance of The Flash I also revisited Screen Rant's forecasts back in early 2023 for the box office grosses of the eight live-action Marvel and DC superhero films scheduled for release that year, seven of which actually did hit theaters before December 31 (all but Kraven the Hunter). Anticipating that three of the movies would break the billion-dollar barrier (Ant-Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Aquaman 2), a gross just short of that for one more ($950 million for Captain Marvel 2), not too much less for still another ($700 million for The Flash), and something even for the weaker DC heroes ($450 million for Shazam 2, $400 million for Blue Beetle), altogether the expectation was of the seven movies taking in some $5.7 billion altogether.

Every single one of these predictions proved overoptimistic, in many cases grossly so. Not one movie even came close to the billion-dollar barrier, let alone broke it. The closest was Guardians of the Galaxy 3, with $845 million--against the $1.2 billion Screen Rant forecast for it, as all of the others were subject to charges of significant underperformance, and most may have lost money, with two of them in fact topping the chart of the year's biggest flops (The Flash and Captain Marvel 2). Altogether those movies ended up making some $2.5 billion--not quite half the figure forecast for them.

As this went to show 2023 was a terrible year for conventional blockbusters, with that longtime king of the blockbuster the superhero film suffering particularly badly. The following year, 2024, did not go as badly as some feared--but then its slate was a lot thinner. Rather than five first-rank Marvel/DC superhero films such as we had in 2023, there was just one, Deadpool & Wolverine--and that, I stress again, a highly idiosyncratic movie whose success, while undeniable, does not necessarily prove that "Marvel's back!" the way the occupants of the executive suites and their courtiers in the entertainment press would like everyone to believe. The results with respect to the "lessons" of 2023 were thus less conclusive than they might be. However, with Captain America 4 mere weeks away and two more Marvel Cinematic Universe films following it in the next half year, all as DC gets its relaunch with a new Superman film, we will see this year whether 2023 was an unhappy anomaly, or revealed the "new normal" of the box office.