The Profitability of Thor 4: A Note

When Thor 4 came out expectations were high for the film, some thinking that this Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) franchise that tends to play more like a Guardians of the Galaxy movie than an Avengers movie was going to break into a higher tier of moneymaker. This was not wholly unreasonable. after all, each Thor movie had made more than the last, with the process gone far enough that in 2022 terms Thor 3 (Thor: Ragnarok) was a billion dollar hit--its $854 million in late 2017 about $1.025 billion in summer 2022 prices. However, pulling in a mere $761 million Thor 4 actually made less in nominal terms, and a quarter less in real terms (with the fact only partially attributable to Marvel's shutout from China), and that result quite naturally received as a letdown.* Indeed, the suspicion that the movie failed to break even on its theatrical run would seem to be justified by the numbers Deadline published this month--the theatrical run bringing in $350 million, as against the $455 million spent on the production, prints and ads, and overhead and interest, while participations and residuals also had to be paid (these eventually totaling another $57 million).

Of course, there was home entertainment and streaming/TV, which came close to matching the theatrical run's earnings with another $300 million. The result was that Thor 4 still ended up with a respectable profit of $103 million.

Still, it seems worth noting that just as with Black Panther 2 this meant a halving of the profit from the last entry in the series in real terms, Thor 3 having made a profit of $174 million back in 2017 according to the same formula (which worked out to about $209 million at the time Thor 4 came out).

It is not the direction in which Disney-Marvel needed the numbers to move, in either case. Indeed, if the numbers keep moving in this direction, profitability quickly becomes nonexistent. Yet with $100 million more made than what was spent it is no franchise-killer.

* Thor 3 made about $112 million in China--about $135 million in summer 2022 terms, such that even without it, merely matching Thor 3 in the rest of the world the movie should have made about $890 million. Putting it another way, the film's non-Chinese gross dropped about 14 percent from the last Thor movie, in contrast with the increases previously seen.

Thor 4 vs. Black Panther 2 vs. Ant-Man 3 . . . vs. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and The Marvels?

From Thor 4 on every new Marvel movie has, in inflation-adjusted, "real" terms, taken in one-quarter to one-half less than the preceding film in the series (Thor 4 vs. Thor 3, etc.). Moreover, the significance of the trend is confirmed by the fact that, where available, the profits show it--"cash-on-cash return" as calculated by Deadline showing a one-half drop in profit for Thor 4 and Black Panther 2 as against Thor 3 and the original Black Panther, respectively.

Thor 4 had the smallest drop in box office gross (of roughly one-quarter), Black Panther 2 the biggest (one-half), while Ant-Man 3 was in the middle (its worldwide gross about a third down from that of Ant-Man 2). It may seem surprising that Black Panther 2 suffered the biggest drop, given the tendency to present it as a hit, as against Ant-Man 3's generally acknowledged failure. However, whatever one makes of the many factors involved in such "spin," the original Black Panther was treated as an event, producing a result even a well-received sequel was unlikely to match, while the loss of the star was a further handicap--while people tend to be less quick to call a movie that made over $800 million a flop as against one that failed to break the half billion-dollar barrier (the more for the post-pandemic era being one of "flexible" expectations in such matters).

The result is that it is probably more useful to focus on the other two films when gauging the prospects of new Marvel movies, like Guardians of the Galaxy 3, which, as I have already argued given the estimates regarding the opening weekend, may play out like Ant-Man 3, with a (real, inflation-adjusted) gross a rough one-third lower than what Guardians of the Galaxy 2 managed (expectations which will be partially confirmed, or disconfirmed, by Sunday).

Still, it seems to me possible that the Black Panther series may be a more useful precedent for considering the fate of The Marvels. Its predecessor, Captain Marvel, like Black Panther, was a release in the first three months of the year touted as an "event," in part because it was the first MCU movie with a female lead, but also in part because the climax of Marvel's Phase Three in the mega-event of the release of Avengers: Endgame was a mere seven weeks away. The result was a $1.1 billion gross in early 2019, which is more like $1.3 billion in the terms of early 2023 (and, if the Fed is right about the inflation rate, maybe more like $1.4 billion later this year)--such that even a very well-received Marvels movie would probably not do as well. Especially given the divided reaction to Captain Marvel (this was the movie that officially drove Rotten Tomatoes to introduce two audience scores in an attempt to limit the effect of "review-bombing"); the tie-in between a major MCU movie and a Disney streaming show (which strategy did not serve Dr. Strange 2 well, and will probably not serve this movie well either, especially given that the show prompted similar reactions to the first Captain Marvel movie); and the decision to bump the movie's release from late July to November (which has been grist to the mill of the skeptics, among whom the rumor that poor test screenings is circulating); there is that much more reason to anticipate "headwinds." Indeed, it may not be unreasonable to anticipate a Black Panther 2-like fall from the gross of the original Captain Marvel (which is to say, a real terms drop of half into the $600-$700 million range), while I would not rule out the film's performing even below this mark (perhaps, sliding down into Ant-Man 3 territory).

Of course, it is just May--and the release of The Marvels a whole half year away. But it is hard to picture anything in the next six months strongly enhancing this movie's prospects from whatever they happen to be now--especially if Guardians of the Galaxy 3 fails to revive the public's excitement about the MCU.

Is There Any Hope for Captain Marvel 2 at the Box Office?

There has been plenty of pessimism about Captain Marvel 2 in recent weeks--as many an analysis of the available data shows, apparently for excellent reason. Films made from the longtime templates for blockbusters in our era--like big-budget high-concept franchise-based sci-fi action films--have been flopping right and left, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe consistently underperforming since at least Thor 4 four movies back. Moreover, were these precedents not worrying enough in themselves the early box office tracking for the film has produced expectations of, for that type of film, a very poor opening weekend--one in the $45-$62 million range, which is to say, even at the high end of the range, less in real terms than the original Captain Marvel took in on opening day.*

Is there, then, any reason to think the film might do better than disastrously? The best reason I can think of is that hits lately are less front-loaded than they used to be, such that they are displaying the kind of legs that redeem a weak opening, with the prior MCU film worth remarking. Guardians of the Galaxy 3's first Friday-to-Sunday gross was a letdown, but the movie proved "leggier" than expected in slightly better than tripling that opening weekend gross.

If Captain Marvel 2 has an opening weekend closer to the high end of the range and triples that over its run, it would beat Boxoffice Pro's projection--blasting past the $156 million now discussed as the (fairly low) high end of the range it calculated to surpass the $180 million mark. Should the movie quadruple that figure, as many films have done this year, its gross would enter the range of $250 million. And should it quintuple its opening weekend ticket sales the way Elemental did, even starting with the weakest opening projected for it the movie would still blow past the $200 million mark, and at the high end of the range, surpass the $300 million mark, and in the process come to look much, much less like a flop. Indeed, especially were the international gross to correspond to this (so that the global gross is 2.65 times the domestic gross), the movie would end up within striking distance of $800 million, at which point, on the basis of the currently reported outlays for the film, it could end up not just profitable, but one of the more profitable films of the year.

Of course, if the hits are less front-loaded and showing longer legs the flops open weakly--and collapse, as The Flash did (the movie ending up with that weak debut accounting for more than half of all it ever made in North America). This leaves the question of why the movie might--or might not--end up a leggy hit rather than a buckling flop. Where "might" is concerned what the movie seems to have going for it is that if anticipation for it does not seem very strong, the anticipation for the other movies scheduled to come out over the same stretch of the year is less strong than that--Fandango's poll telling us that Captain Marvel 2 is doing about as well that way as any movie in the next two months, with the second most-anticipated movie (and closest competition Captain Marvel has), Aquaman 2, coming out six weeks later. The significance of weak competition should not be underestimated, especially in a time of year in which movies show more box office staying power than tends to be the case in the summer season.

Where the possibility of making this happen is concerned what those hopeful for the film might see as most likely to give the movie its chance is the public's finding Captain Marvel 2 a "pleasant surprise" after the way it has been talked down (which would be the extreme opposite of the way The Flash was talked up so insanely it could not but disappoint). It may also be that the audience will find themselves in the mood for a "silly" Marvel movie at this point, to laugh rather than sit through a played-out repetition of the familiar formulas--and perhaps also find that this one is a better put-together silly movie than Thor 4. (Audience affection for Thor 4 seems to have badly undermined by tonal consistency as it went from the dark horror movie stuff with Gorr the God Butcher to broad comedy and back.) Just avoiding that, and keeping the movie mercifully brief for an audience impatient with lumbering three-hour epics, could work to Captain Marvel 2's advantage.

Still, if a relatively happy outcome for Captain Marvel 2 does not seem wholly outside the range of possibility the movie seems to have an uphill battle ahead of it--on which you can expect to read more right here.

* Captain Marvel took in $61.7 million on the day of release back in March 2019, which adjusted for inflation using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index works out to $75 million.

What Will Guardians of the Galaxy 3 Make in its Opening Weekend?

A couple of weeks ago I offered an estimate of Guardians of the Galaxy 3's box office gross (that now, perhaps unsurprisingly given the movie's coming out Friday, seems to be getting a lot of traffic).

At the time I concerned myself with the film's overall box office performance, not its opening weekend performance, which is the main thing we are hearing about now. According to Variety, Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 3, is expected to take in $120 million in its opening weekend at the domestic box office.

This sounds robust (and certainly the relevant media presents this as excellent). But $120 million is, even in current dollars, about a fifth down from what Guardians of the Galaxy 2 made in its opening weekend during the same three-day period in May (May 5-May 7) six years ago. Some $147 million, when one adjusts it for today's prices, that opening weekend take was more like $180 million.*

So basically the expectation is that Guardians of the Galaxy 3 will make a third less than Guardians of the Galaxy 2--suggesting the new movie's making a lot less than its predecessor.

Might the film have better "legs" offsetting an underwhelming opening weekend, however? I know of no reason to think so. Quite the contrary, it is a highly publicized threequel coming into a crowded-as-usual summer movie season very different from last year's, in which circumstances the same "front-loading" of the gross as was seen with the preceding movie made seem rather plausible. Guardians of the Galaxy picked up 38 percent of its total domestic gross in those first three days--a typical figure for high-profile sequels--and should Guardians of the Galaxy 3 do the same it would end up with about $320 million in the till. This is less than what the preceding Guardian films made in current dollar terms, and about a third down from what Guardians of the Galaxy 3 made in real, inflation-adjusted terms.

Down near the bottom end of the range of predictions previously being discussed (roughly, $290-$400 million), were the international grosses (57 percent of the total previously) to go the same way the movie's final global tally would be in the vicinity of $740 million, again a significant drop from what came before (Guardians of the Galaxy 2 a billion dollar hit in today's terms).

Moreover, it seems some analysts are even less optimistic about key parts of the picture. Deadline, which estimated a $130 million gross for the film's opening weekend not quite three weeks ago, now offers another estimate in the area of $110 million, which, apart from setting us up for still less on the basis of the same formulas I have used here (a Guardians movie taking in $290 million domestically, $670 million globally), in itself bespeaks the kind of falling expectations that preceded Thor 4's less-than-stellar performance last summer. Meanwhile I find myself thinking about Ant-Man 3's underwhelming performance, and how that was much more a matter of underperformance internationally rather than at home in North America. Where Ant-Man 3's box office slipped by a sixth domestically, it fell about half internationally in real terms. Were the drop for Guardians' international gross to be that much greater than its domestic drop (which already seems likely to be much sharper than the one Ant-Man 3 suffered, one-third rather than one-sixth, and maybe worse) it is not inconceivable that the international take could be that much weaker.

The result is that if a Guardians performance in the $700-$750 million range looks worrisome, worse still is quite conceivable. In the event of $290 million in North America, combined with an Ant-Man 3-like drop internationally, the movie might not see $600 million. Were the international drop, again, increased in severity, as the American drop increased in severity, the movie could see a good deal less than $600 million.

At this point it seems one could say something of potential profitability. Even with its reported $250 million budget Guardians 3 would not necessarily be a money-loser with a $700-$750 million gross. After all, Thor 4, budgeted at a similar level, if failing to cover its cost in its theatrical run, eventually brought in a $100 million cash-on-cash return thanks to characteristically healthy Marvel revenues from home entertainment/streaming/TV (and perhaps more still from merchandise, and from keeping the bigger-than-any-one-movie-or-series Marvel machinery grinding along). And there is for the time being no reason to think the profitability of a Guardians movie at that level would be worse. But it would likely be less than Disney-Marvel was hoping for from a Guardians of the Galaxy 3, the more in as it is a good deal less profit than it made from Guardians 2 ($190 million adjusted for today's terms, by my reckoning), continuing the pattern of falling profits (indeed, halved profits on its latest sequels relative to their predecessors, as seen with Thor 4 and Black Panther 2), and reaffirming the increasingly widespread view that Marvel's heyday is a thing of the past rather than proving the occasion on which the mega-franchise rallied and showed up the naysayers. Moreover, in 2023 it will not have a better chance than this one was, with the animated Spider-Man and the Kraven movies different sorts of projects, best judged by a different standard, and the only other comparable MCU movie The Marvels, which has been bumped from July all the way out to November.

I will have more to say of that film's chances--as well as Guardians' own prospects--as more data comes in.

* As always, I am using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index, in this case adjusting May 2017 prices for those of March 2023.

The Action Film Becomes King of the Box Office: Actual Numbers

It seems generally understood that the action movie took off in the '80s, and, while going through some changes (becoming less often R-rated and more often PG-13-rated, setting aside the cops and commandos to focus on fantasy and science fiction themes), captured a bigger and bigger share of the box office until it reached its predominant position today.

Still, this is something people seem to take as a given without generally checking it for themselves, and so I decided to do just that, looking at the ten highest-grossing films of every year from 1980 to the present, as listed by that ever-handy database, Box Office Mojo.

Of course, this was a trickier endeavor than it might sound. I had to decide, after all, just what to count as an action film. In my particular count I strove to leave aside action-comedies where the accent is on comedy (Stakeout, Kindergarten Cop), sports dramas (the Rocky series), and suspense thrillers (Witness, Silence of the Lambs, Basic Instinct), war films (Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor), historical epics (Titanic) and fantasy and science fiction movies (Harry Potter) that may contain action but strike me as not really being put together as action films. I also left out animated films of all types even when they might have qualified (The Incredibles) to focus solely on live-action features. Some "subjectivity" was unavoidably involved in determining whether or not films made the cut even so. (I included Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the count for 2005. Some, in my place, probably would not.) Still, I generally let myself be guided by Box Office Mojo when in doubt, and I suspect that, especially toward the latter part of the period, I undercounted rather than overcounted, and in the process understated just how much the market had shifted in the direction of action films (and to be frank, thought that the safer side to err on).

Ultimately I concluded that 2.2 such films a year were average in the '80s (1980--1989), 3.6 in '90s (1990-1999), 4.8 in the '00s (2000-2009), and 5.4 for the current decade so far (2010-2016). Moreover, discarding the unusual year of 2010 (just 2 action movies), a half dozen action films in the top ten have been the the norm for the last period (2011-2016). This amounts not just to a clear majority of the most-seen movies, but close to triple the proportion seen in the '80s.

Moreover, the upward trend was steady through the whole period. It does not seem insignificant that, while 2 a year were average for the '80s, 1989 was the first year in which the three top spots were all claimed by action movies (Batman, Indiana Jones and Lethal Weapon #1, #2 and #3 respectively). Nor that no year after 1988 had fewer than two such movies in the top ten, and only 3 of the 28 years that followed (1991, 1992 and 2010) had under three. Indeed, during the 2000-2009 period, not one year had less than four movies of the type in its top ten, and after 2010, not one year had under six.

Especially considering that I probably undercounted rather than overcounted, there is no denying the magnitude of that shift by this measure. And while at the moment I have not taken an equally comprehensive approach to the top 20 (which would provide an even fuller picture), my impression is that it would reinforce this assessment, rather than undermine it. If in 1980 we look at the top 20, we still see just one action movie--Empire Strikes Back. But if we do the same in 2016 we add to the six films in the top ten Doctor Strange, Jason Bourne, Star Trek Beyond and X-Men: Apocalypse, four more films (even while we leave out such films as Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and Kung Fu Panda 3).

Anyone who cares to can check my counting below and see if they come up with anything much different.

The Data
1980-1989: 22 films (2.2 a year).
1980-top 10 films, only 1 action movie-Empire Strikes Back.
1981-2: Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman II.
1982-2: Star Trek 2 and 48 HRS.
1983-3: Return of the Jedi, Octopussy, Sudden Impact.
1984-3: Beverly Hills Cop, Indiana Jones, Star Trek 3.
1985-2: Rambo 2, Jewel of the Nile.
1986-2: Top Gun, Aliens.
1987-3: Beverly Hills Cop 2, Lethal Weapon, The Untouchables.
1988-1: Die Hard.
1989-3: Batman, Indiana Jones, Lethal Weapon 2 (all in the top 3 slots, the first time this ever happened).

1990-1999: 36 films (3.6 a year).
1990-4: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Die Hard 2.
1991-2: Terminator 2, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
1992-2: Batman 2, Lethal Weapon 3.
1993-4: Jurassic Park, The Fugitive, In the Line of Fire, Cliffhanger.
1994-3: True Lies, Clear and Present Danger, Speed.
1995-5: Batman 3, Goldeneye, Die Hard 3, Apollo 13, Jumanji.
1996-4: ID, Twister, Mission: Impossible, The Rock.
1997-5: Men in Black, The Lost World, Air Force One, Star Wars (Episode IV reissue), Tomorrow Never Dies.
1998-4: Armageddon, Rush Hour, Deep Impact, Godzilla.
1999-3: Star Wars: Episode I, The Matrix, The Mummy.

2000-2009: 48 films (4.8 a year).
2000-4: Mission: Impossible 2, Gladiator, A Perfect Storm, X-Men.
2001-5: The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) 1, Rush Hour 2, Mummy, Jurassic 3, The Planet of the Apes.
2002-4: Spiderman, Star Wars: Episode II, LOTR 2, Men In Black 2.
2003-6:  LOTR 3, The Pirates of the Caribbean, The Matrix 2, X-Men 2, Terminator 3, The Matrix 3.
2004-4: Spiderman 2, The Day After Tomorrow, The Bourne Supremacy, National Treasure.
2005-5: Star Wars: Episode III, The War of the Worlds, King Kong, Batman Begins, Mr and Mrs. Smith.
2006-4: Pirates of the Caribbean 2, X-Men: The Last Stand, Superman Returns, Casino Royale.
2007-7: Spiderman 3, The Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, National Treasure 2, The Bourne Ultimatum, I Am Legend Legend, 300.
2008-5: The Dark Knight, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man, Hancock, Quantum of Solace.
2009-4: Avatar, Transformers 2, Star Trek, Sherlock Holmes.

2010-2016: 38 films (5.4 a year).
2010-2: Iron Man 2, Inception.
2011-6: Transformers 3, Pirates 4, Fast Five, MI 4, Sherlock 2, Thor.
2012-6: The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Hunger Games, Skyfall, Hobbit 1, Spiderman.
2013-6: Hunger Games 2, Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, Hobbit 2, Fast 6, Oz the Great and Powerful.
2014-6: Hunger Games 3, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America 2, Hobbit 3, Transformers 4, X-Men: Days of Future Past.
2015-6: Star Wars, Jurassic, Avengers 2, Furious 7, Hunger Games 4, Spectre.
2016-6: Rogue One, Captain America III, Jungle Book, Deadpool, Batman vs. Superman, Suicide Squad.

Black Panther 2's Fourth Weekend

Black Panther 2 took in some $18 million in its fourth weekend, bringing its gross during the first twenty-four days of its North American run to $394 million.

But how much higher will it go?

Once more the original Black Panther can seem a good first point of comparison. That movie took in $562 million in the same period--working out to 80 percent of its total. If Black Panther 2 likewise manages to expand its 24-day take by another 25 percent then it will finish up in the vicinity of $500 million, which does not seem wholly implausible.

Still, there is the fact that the film is fading faster. The original Black Panther not only opened "bigger" ($202 million on opening weekend, which is $240-$250 million in today's terms, versus Black Panther 2's $181 million), but in spite of the particularly large opening in its fourth weekend took in 20% of what the movie made in its first three days ($41 million). By contrast in its fourth weekend Black Panther 2 made less than 10 percent of what it did in its more modest opening weekend (under $18 million)--a fact offsetting the better hold it got from a Thanksgiving day release.

Once again, its trajectory looks less like that of Black Panther than that of Thor 4, which made about the same relative to its first weekend in its fourth (9.2 rather than 9.7 percent). That movie made 88 percent of its gross by that point. Assuming Black Panther 2 to be doing the same it would be headed for a gross in the vicinity of $450 million.

Meanwhile the overseas earnings are likely to be proportionate. Currently running 86 percent of the domestic gross, should this trend continue down to the end of the film's run the movie would end up making $390-$430 million. The result is that the global take would be in the $840-$930 million range--once more, under a billion dollars, and especially at the low end of the range--which I think the more likely outcome--not much more than the disappointing Thor 4 ($761 million), somewhat less than the not-quite-all-that-was-hoped-for Dr. Strange 2 ($956 million), and in real terms, perhaps just half of what the original Black Panther made ($1.6-$1.7 billion in 2022 dollars).

As is usually the case in such matters the entertainment press will look on the bright side--but it is still a far from overwhelming response to the first sequel to Marvel's big event movie of just a few years ago, and to the close of Marvel's "Phase 4." Indeed, with the profitability of the film possibly in doubt (even allowing for all the ambiguities in these matters one can only be sure if a movie makes five times its production budget, which $800-$900 million is not in this case) whether the movie was a hit or a flop is doubtless already the cause of the usual ferocious arguments among the culture warriors (on both sides of the line) who seem to think their arguments about (usually) mediocre, forgettable movies, the most important issue of an epoch of pandemic, war, economic catastrophe and ecological collapse--while adding immensely to the anxieties of Disney's shareholders, board and executives as, on top of the other troubles beleaguering the once unstoppable-seeming Disney machine, flop is piled atop flop piled atop flop. (Indeed, looking beyond the aforementioned Marvel-based disappointments, Black Panther 2 scarcely had a chance to let the company's "leadership" down before the megabuck autumn release Strange World crashed and burned, just months after Lightyear underperformed, while in America, at least, the $175 million Turning Red was sent straight to video, where, as Warner Bros' recent conduct reminds everyone, nothing that pricey can really make enough to cover its cost, even with the benefit of a far friendlier reception than it got.)

What, if anything, the management will do about the situation is another matter entirely.

How Much Does a $250 Million Production Need to Make in Order to Break Even?

We seem to hear the figure $250 million in relation to production budgets a lot these days. Thor 4 and Black Panther 2 supposedly cost that much. So did Guardians of the Galaxy 3. And lots of others.

Seeing how much money these films cost, and how much they made at the box office (well under $1 billion in the case of the first two, with the same expected in the case of the third), people wondered "Was that enough for them to break even?"

The completely unsatisfying but true answer is "It depends."

Not every reported production budget figure is accurate. Even when they are people do not always mean the same thing when they speak of "production budgets." They may be speaking of what it cost to make the movie--or the "net" cost, which is to say how much the studio had to spend, rather than what was covered by outside sources like product placement or tax breaks. They may, consciously or unconsciously, include the "interest and overhead," but not always.

Meanwhile there are the uncertainties about what was spent after production on distribution and promotion--"ads and prints." There is also the matter of "participations and residuals" (as in, someone else gets their cut of the gross, right off the top, pushing the moment at which the backer of a movie breaks even on what they laid out further off). All of this is never cheap, but it can vary very wildly--while the details get a lot less publicity than production costs with the participations and residuals especially complicating things greatly. (Certainly participations and residuals on Top Gun 2 cost almost twice the production budget of the film, $315 million to $177 million.)

Finally, there is how we think about revenue. We usually think in terms of box office gross, of which the studio that made the film is apt to get 40-50 percent of the total in "rentals." But home entertainment, TV, streaming are hugely important revenue generators, even for big hits often delivering 40 percent or more of the total income.

The result of the latter especially is that a movie that would not come close to breaking even on its theatrical run ends up not only breaking even in the end, but a money-maker, with a good example Thor 4. That movie, which according to Deadline really did run $250 million in production costs, without the interest and overhead (another $45 million), and far from slight expenditures on prints and ads ($160 million!), thus incurred well over $400 million in costs just getting into theaters, before any thought of participations and residuals came into the picture.

The movie ended up grossing $760 million theatrically--and netting just $350 million in theatrical rentals. And it would have been a big loss-maker if the issue ended there.

However, between home entertainment, television, streaming, the movie netted another $300 million. In the process the film got $650 million in revenues, for an eventual outlay (participations and residuals included) of a little under $550 million.

So in short--a $250 million movie that grossed just $760 million at the box office not only broke even, but made $100 million+, landing it a spot on the list of the most profitable films of the year. Moreover, all this is without getting into such matters as the value provided in its propping up of a bigger franchise (as is the case with the Marvel Cinematic Universe), or the colossal revenues derived by that franchise from marketing (which propping up that franchise helps, even beyond direct sales of Thor-related merchandise).

All this goes to show that a movie that can fairly be considered a disappointment and an underperformer (compared with, for instance, Thor 3 and the standard the MCU seemed to set in its storied Phase Three) was, taken in itself, very much worth the while for the investors. And so is it likely to go with other similarly expensive movies that at least avoid making much less than the Thor sequel.

The Professional Critics and the Moviegoers: Clashing Scores on Rotten Tomatoes

I remember that not so long ago we generally expected critics to be tougher on movies than the general audience, and that there seemed abundant reason for this. One was that professional critics were people who had, formally or informally, spent a lot of time studying film (often had been doing so before they took up their reviewing job), giving them a bigger frame of cinematic reference and making them alert to a lot of things to which the general audience is often oblivious, so that less would strike them as very fresh and new and surprising and impressive, in contrast with a public that had simply seen less films, and none at all of certain kinds of films, and watched the films it had seen with less attention, and less of the benefits of instruction in the medium. Another was that, again as professional critics, they were given to reflection on their reactions, to actually explaining and defending their opinions, in contrast with an audience not much given to such reflection. And still another was the fact that, where the general audience picks and chooses the films it is most expectant of enjoying critics see a great many movies they expect to dislike (often correctly), and then having to actually write about them. All of this could be expected to make them less easily satisfied--in fact, leave them a jaded, grumpy, demanding bunch--and going by their reviews, and their endless griping about their jobs in the interviews they gave, this did indeed seem to me to be the case. It also seemed the case that big, splashy, high-concept blockbusters did especially poorly with them because, by the standard of traditional storytelling, in its cinematic or any other form, an action movie is simply not likely to be very good because of what it must do as an action movie. Thus would even a rather better-than-average action film typically rate two stars out of four by the old reckoning, or maybe two-and-a-half--a score of 50-60 on a 100 point scale, often for films that the general audience would rate much more highly.

Now it seems a 60 is about average on Rotten Tomatoes--a considerable jump from what the average had been in the '00s--even as the kinds of movies critics typically rate poorly became more common rather than less, and that without getting better (and perhaps worse). Indeed, even when big action movies are at issue the critics' rating now often approximates that of a general audience that may be growing less, not more, discriminating--and even exceeds it.

Consider, for example, the four big action movies of this past summer--Top Gun 2, Dr. Strange 2, Thor 4, and Jurassic Park 3 (or 6, depending on how you count them).

The critics gave Top Gun 2 a near-perfect 96 percent score, nearly 40 points higher than their predecessors gave the original Top Gun (which, consistent with the earlier tendency to the 50-60 percent range, landed just a 58 percent score, in spite of its having been pretty much the same thing, and also done it first); while this is almost as good a score as the 98 percent score the general audience gave the movie (and the 99 percent score from the "verified" audience whose ticket purchases were electronically confirmed).

Dr. Strange 2 got a less exuberant but still very solid 74 percent score from the critics, not far behind the 77 percent score the general audience offered (and even the 85 percent score of the verified audience).

Thor 4 got a 64 percent score from critics, actually higher than the general audience gave it (63 percent, with even the verified audience's 77 percent not much better).

Only with Jurassic Park 3/6 did we see the old pattern, with critics giving the movie a really below-average 29 percent (a good old-fashioned one-star rating), in contrast with the general audience's 69 percent (and the verified audience's 77 percent).

Of course, one may in considering all this note that the so-called "Top Critics" (who get their own score) are often less enthusiastic than the critics generally about most films. Still, the differential is usually just a few points--and in the case of Top Gun 2 they were actually more enthusiastic than the broader group (giving the movie a score not of 96 percent, but 99 percent, as good as what the verified audience accorded it).

The result is that, however one explains the fact, there is plenty of quantitative evidence indicating that the bar has been lowered considerably--not equally for every project (the media was basically a cheerleader for Top Gun 2, and eats up anything Marvel, contributing to the success of all those films), but certainly on the whole, so much so that on the rare occasions when they seem to think it "safe" to give a movie a bad review they can seem the more ready to do it simply to shore up their credibility.

Is Guardians of the Galaxy 3 Proving to be Another Ant-Man 3? (An Estimate of Guardians of the Galaxy 3's Second Weekend Gross)

As I previously mentioned, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 opened in the same three-day May period as Guardians of the Galaxy 2 did six years earlier (May 5-May 7).

It took in a lot less, however--$114 million versus the $147 million its predecessor did in 2017 (and the $180 million that sum would be worth in March 2023 dollars).

There is no denying the significance of the drop as compared with that prior film's earnings, and earlier expectations. (Just weeks ago people were still talking about a $155 million opening, one-third higher than what the movie actually got.) Still, one may wonder if, accepting that audiences did not come out as hoped during the first weekend, they might be enticed to come out during the second--by good word of mouth, perhaps.

That is a long shot with a franchise threequel on the opening weekend of the summer season, of course--the more so given the pattern of the recent MCU movies, which have tended toward weaker legs, not stronger, even as their openings disappoint the cheer-leaders. This seems less likely still to happen for Guardians specifically when one considers how the gross fell from Friday to Saturday to Sunday night--in a manner almost identical to that of that particularly weak recent MCU performer, Ant-Man 3. (Ant-Man 3, which took in just a slightly smaller $106 million in its opening weekend, saw that weekend's gross structured in almost exactly the same way.)

Ultimately Ant-Man 3's gross tumbled 70 percent from its first (three-day) weekend to its second. Black Panther 2 and Thor 4 suffered drops almost as bad--of 67 and 68 percent respectively (with Thor 4's showing the more significant because, unlike the other two, it did not come out on an extended, holiday weekend that contributed to the further front-loading of the gross).

Even the least-worst of these numbers would still have Guardians of the Galaxy 2 pulling in a mere $38 million in its second weekend, while an Ant-Man 3-like tumble would have it taking in just $34 million--scarcely ahead of Ant-Man 3's $32 million (and half Guardians of the Galaxy 2's nominal second weekend gross of $65 million).* This would put it on track to make Ant-Man 3-like money, again, something in the $230 million range--which would be a bit under half of what Guardians of the Galaxy 2 took in in 2023 dollars (about $470 million).

In that case Guardians 3's take would fall below even the more pessimistic expectations of just a short while ago (a gross in the $290 million range) by a long way.

What would a more positive performance look like? For example, if Guardians 3 did at least as well as Guardians 2?

Guardians 2 saw a more modest 56 percent drop in weekend gross from the first weekend to the second. A far better hold than that of any of the MCU movies discussed here, the same would leave Guardians 3 with a second weekend take of $50 million at the North American box office, and maybe something in the area of $190 million total, suggesting that trajectory's leading toward the neighborhood of $300 million.

So right now that looks to me like the plausible range regarding the second weekend gross--$34 million to $50 million, with my suspicion, given the performance of the last three MCU movies, and the close parallel with Ant-Man 3, that the low end of the range is more likely than the high (with anything above $40 million a surprise).

In light of this it also seems to me that the plausible range for the domestic gross over the film's longer run is $230 million to $300 million (if, from its weaker starting point, it at least holds up as well as Guardians 2). Alongside this is an international gross in the $340 million to $400 million range, depending on whether it turns out the movie likewise made half its money overseas on the opening weekend, or has a run more broadly like that of the original Guardians. Together this adds up to the movie's prospects ranging from under $600 million in the Ant-Man 3-like collapse-after-the-first-weekend scenario, to $700 million in the event of the stronger performance.

Even with the better hold the gross would, in comparison with what Guardians of the Galaxy 2 made, recall Ant-Man 3's earnings relative to Ant-Man 2 (if arrived at a bit differently, with proportionately less grossed at home, and more abroad), while without it the drop would be still more severe. (Ant-Man 3's earnings of $475 million, in real terms, are about 36 percent below what Ant-Man 2 made previously, while anything under $650 million would be less than that for Guardians--the $570 million discussed here as the extreme low end more like 45 percent less.)

As all this indicates the high end of the range is still a disappointment given what was invested in and expected of the film (and needed from it by its backer), the low, coming on top of Ant-Man 3, likely grounds for outright panic at Disney-Marvel.

* Guardians of the Galaxy 2's $65 million opening weekend in May 2017 is the equivalent of $81 million in March 2023 dollars--which would be more like two-and-a-half times what Guardians 3 would make if it went the Ant-Man 3 route.

NOTE: This post was written before the upward revision in the reported weekend gross of the film to $118 million. As the adjustment would have only a slight effect on the calculations discussed here (e.g. changing the $34-$38 million range discussed here to $35-$39 million) the author has elected to let the prediction stand.

Is Black Panther 2 a Commercial Failure?

Hollywood's release schedule continues to normalize. The summer release schedule was thinner than usual (a mere four top-grade would-be action-adventure blockbusters), with the last released in July and the next three months, again, on the light side by the standards of 2019 and before. But from late October forward the slate, if not quite so packed with likely big winners as in some years (or it seems likely to be in 2023), does contain some plausible mega-hits. Most obviously there is Avatar 2, which seems far and away the film most likely to take the American and global box office crown away from Top Gun 2. However, there has also been the Veteran's Day weekend release, Black Panther 2--the follow-up to the #1 film at the American box office of its own year (2018).

That movie, of course, appeared just when Marvel was at about its peak as a commercial draw--the late '10s, circa what would have been regarded as the triumphant climax and conclusion to the Marvel Cinematic Universe had the franchise's runners opted to go out strong at the end of "Phase Three." And there was the promotion of the film as a civil rights "first" (which was a major reason why, in contrast with the rest of the world, Black Panther and not Avengers 3 was the highest-grossing movie in America in 2018). Neither factor can be considered operative with Black Panther 2's release, while the film may also be said to have had the disadvantage of replacing not only its lead actor, but its lead character (in yet another gender switch Black Panther's sister Shuri taking up his mantle).

In spite of all that the movie seems to be selling a lot of tickets at the North American box office--if not so many as some of the more bullish initial projections (which ran as high as $225 million), then at least enough to make the bottom end of that range ($180 million), and leave the film's backers with what would ordinarily be regarded as a respectable sum banked at this stage of the game. Still, the film is a long, long way from matching the gross of the original--$700 million back in 2018, which adjusting for inflation is more like $820-$860 million today (depending on whether one goes by the Consumer Price Index generally or ticket prices specifically), and it is far from clear that it will close the gap, some projections anticipating the film's run ending with just half that $800 million+ figure in North America (a bit north of $400 million). Meanwhile the international box office (which, again, was less enthusiastic about the first movie than the North American, treating the movie as a regular Marvel film, not the milestone it was in the U.S.) would seem unlikely to compensate--especially with, once again, the Marvel movie not playing in China (where the first Black Panther film had made $100 million).

Accordingly it seems likely that the movie will end up with a good deal less banked than the original--maybe even falling short of the $1 billion mark that the first so easily crossed at the global level (and that in today's depreciated dollars, never mind any adjustment for constant dollar values). Indeed, given the likelihood of the gross being at the lower end of the range, and the reality that the first film did a bit less than half its business abroad, even with China included (just 49.3 percent), a Black Panther movie making, for example, $430 million in North America during a global release not unlike that of the last time, but with China out of the picture, might not unreasonably be expected to finish up under the $800 million mark globally.

Of course, having produced that number one is left with what they are to make of it. Judging the success and failure of particular films is a lot harder these days than it was a mere few years ago. This is partly because the bar for success has been raised so high by a handful of really big movies, and it must be admitted, by the immense resources and hype put into far more movies than can possibly attain that bar (the studios unavoidably making a great many gambles they know will not pay off much, or at all, even at the blockbuster level, because commercially blockbusters are their least-worst option). Part of it is, too, that the box office, like everything else in this age of pandemic, recession, inflation and war--of life as itself the Disaster Movie--becomes more volatile. And admittedly it still feels strange to me to call a movie that grosses $800 million (something maybe a dozen films do a year) a flop. Still, a sequel's making just a bit over half of what the original did is not usually considered a spectacular success. Indeed, thinking of this as a matter of Black Panther 2 making the same money as Thor: Love and Thunder did (and less globally than the original made domestically in inflation-adjusted terms) drives home the sense of, if a flop only in a very relative and marginal sense, at least less than might have been not unreasonably hoped for by the film's backers.

Additionally, with this coming on top of the performance of Thor 4--and Shang-Chi--and The Eternals--and Black Widow--reaffirms a sense of Marvel's "Phase Four" being on the whole a disappointment compared with the preceding phases, and very plausibly Marvel's passing the peak of its box office power.* Marvel's Phase Five, which will debut in February 2023 (with Ant-Man 3, and two more major releases in just the next five months), may restore the franchise's fortunes, but I have to admit that I am not too optimistic about that, the essential material simply too played out (indeed, the making and reception of Thor 4 seemed to me a textbook example of what happens when one exploits a character for far too long). And so a giant Marvel is likely to remain for quite some time--but a giant in decline. Just like that other Disney property, Star Wars. However, where Marvel was in the ascendant as Star Wars was declining (this tendency arguably evident from 2002, when for the first time a year with a main line Star Wars movie saw it fail to claim the #1 spot at the box office, beaten out for the top spot by the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man) no other franchise, no other genre, even, seems to be in the ascendant now--with this fact alone sufficient to compound the shakiness of the film industry in our time, especially insofar as it seems to be doubling down on its commitment to big theatrically released films.

* Yes, yes, the $1.9 billion-grossing Spider-Man: No Way Home was admittedly an unqualified success--but the only one, and an anomaly in many ways, not least the special multiverse premise that brought together the three 21st century big-screen versions of the character, which may be virtually unrepeatable. And the more modest performances of not one, not two, but three Marvel films since testifies to its not having set things aright by itself.

The Summer 2022 Box Office: A Hopefully Not-Too-Early Assessment

With August upon us the summer film season is fast drawing to a close--the more in as the last really big release, Thor: Love and Thunder, is already a month behind us, making it not too early to make some assessment of how the season has gone that will look better than premature and wildly off the mark come the "official" end of summer on Labor Day Weekend.

A bit of simple math indicates that in the months of May, June and July the North American box office took in some $2.9 billion. How does that stack up against prior years? Simply adjusting the Box Office Mojo numbers for inflation as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics one gets an average of about $4.2 billion for the May-July period in 2015-2019--with the figure arguably conservative because of how simply bumping the first summer release back into early April, as an ever more aggressive Disney-Marvel did with Avengers 3 and 4 in 2018 and 2019, takes a big chunk out of the summer's earnings. (Avengers: Endgame picked up $427 million in the last five days of April 2019, which if added to the year's total would have raised it by about an eighth--from $3.35 to $3.8 billion before the adjustment for today's higher ticket prices--and of course 2022 saw nothing of the kind.)

The result is that this year the box office did about two-thirds as well as the average for those years. It might be added that July did a better than that--its $1.13 billion take about three-quarters of the July average for 2015-2019 (of $1.46 billion). That is far superior to how it did back in 2021, when you had MCU movies, F9 and the rest making at best half their expected earnings (and the whole three month period barely equaled the July earnings, with just under $1.2 billion in current dollars). But to claim that the situation has returned to the pre-pandemic norm would still be exaggerating things a good deal.

Of course, in considering that fact one has to admit that the release slate was not quite the same as in those prior years. Where 2015-2019, on average, had eight really big, brand name, live-action action-adventure films playing in theaters in the relevant period (DC/Marvel superhero stuff, spy-fi stuff of the Mission: Impossible/Jason Bourne/Fast and Furious franchises, etc.), 2022 had only four by my count (Dr. Strange 2, Top Gun 2, Jurassic World: Dominion, Thor 4), and of these only Top Gun 2 went "above and beyond" expectations (while Dr. Strange was merely respectable, Jurassic World 3 the weakest earner in the trilogy, and Thor arguably an underperformer). And it seems to me that there is at least an argument to be made that the comparative weakness of the summer slate reflects justifiable caution on the part of the studios as much as it does a cause of the summer's lackluster grosses by pre-pandemic standards.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3: Revisiting the Ant-Man 3 Comparison

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has, since the climax of Phase Three, seen a nearly unbroken series of disappointments in various degree, Ant-Man 3's underperformance was of particular concern. After all, the earlier installments in particular were released when the pandemic had the global box office way down from the historical norm--such that the meaning of the earnings of Black Widow, The Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was ambiguous, while Dr. Strange 2, if not all that had been hoped for given the groundwork laid by the colossally successful Spider-Man: No Way Home and its opening-of-the-summer release, still outdid the first Dr. Strange as it took in, if not a billion dollars, then also not so much less. Subsequently, if in current terms Thor 4 did poorly next to its predecessor Thor 3 (taking in $760 million, against the $854 million Thor 3 made in 2017, and the $1 billion+ it made in 2022 dollars) it was an exceptional fourth installment in its series; while Black Panther 2, if seeing a worse drop (Black Panther 2 made just half what the original did in real, inflation-adjusted terms) was a follow-up to a particularly colossal hit that was in some ways unrepeatable (as a "first" held to be of political significance), and suffered from the loss of the original's star.

There were no such excuses for Ant-Man 3, given a relatively easy February release (as compared with the summertime box office its two predecessors had to contend with), and boosted with the interest of its being the opening act of Phase Five, all as the preceding films did not raise the bar all that high (Ant-Man 2 taking in not much over $600 million globally). However, its real terms gross ended up over a third down from Ant-Man 3's none-too-stellar take ($476 million grossed to date, against the $740-$750 million Ant-Man 2 made in 2023 dollars).

All of this seemed to bode poorly for Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and indeed, after its opening weekend I speculated here about what Guardians would make if it followed an Ant-Man 3-like trajectory from that point on (producing estimates of a domestic gross under $250 million, and a global box office of possibly under $600 million).

As it happened, the films ended up performing very differently. Ant-Man 3 had what seemed a decent opening weekend domestically, and then saw its grosses fall hard (70 percent from the first weekend to the second), while its international gross suffered even worse. (In the end, in inflation-adjusted terms, Ant-Man 3 made about a sixth less domestically than Ant-Man 3, while its international gross fell almost half.) By contrast Guardians of the Galaxy 3 had a disappointing opening weekend, followed by surprisingly strong second and third weekend holds, quickly mooting the worst case scenario (the movie's domestic gross is already well past $250 million now); while in relative terms it did better overseas (producing a 60/40 international/domestic split, versus the 55/45 split seen with Guardians of the Galaxy 2).*

The strong legs in the domestic market, and the relatively robust international performance, will mean that Guardians of the Galaxy 3 will, gross-wise, hold up relatively better to the preceding film in its series than Ant-Man 3 did. Indeed, I suspect its final, inflation-adjusted gross will be a fifth or less down from what the second installment did (with this split a bit differently, the movie about three-tenths down in the domestic market, and just a tenth down internationally, from that mark).

Still, if this is grounds for a sigh of relief on the part of Guardians' backers (a gross of $800 million+ is a lot better than <$600 million), it confirms the general downward trend in the grosses, and profitability, of the MCU, which may be expected to continue rather than reverse (even as some films do better than others). This certainly seems the case with Captain Marvel 2, like Black Panther 2 a follow-up to a film whose success may be unrepeatable (as a politically significant "first," and having hit theaters mere weeks before the highly anticipated Avengers: Endgame), presaging a particularly severe drop, which may be worsened by the headwinds it faces (which I have written enough about previously to not bother belaboring here)--such that I would think it lucky to do as well as Guardians, with all that implies for the MCU's fortunes.

* The 12 days following Ant-Man 3's opening weekend saw it boost its initial three-day gross a mere 76 percent in the domestic market (from $106 to $187 million). By contrast Guardians of the Galaxy 3 increased its gross over its opening weekend take by a much better 125 percent over the same period (from $118 to $267 million, already beating out Ant-Man 3's final domestic take by $50 million, with a good deal more to come).

Our First Non-Superhero Summer Movie Season Kickoff Since 2006

Surveying those films that launched the hugely important summer movie season over the course of the twenty-first century one finds that it is not only the case that nearly every first weekend of that season since 2008 has been launched by a Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film (beginning with that year's Iron Man), with this the case for each and every proper summer season since 2015.* It is also the case that since 2002 just about every summer movie season was launched by a Marvel superhero epic--with the Spider-Man (2002, 2004, 2007) and X-Men (2003) movies arrived before the MCU came along, and filling in the gaps in most of those rare years after Iron Man when there was no MCU film scheduled for that weekend (2009, 2014).**

It was an extraordinary run testifying to the extraordinary popularity not just of the MCU, but the broader Marvel brand, and the superhero film generally.

Of course, 2024 will not be seeing an MCU, or any Marvel or even superhero, release on the first weekend of summer. Instead the season will open with . . . The Fall Guy.

This may seem just a blip. After all, Captain America 4 was supposed to open that critical first weekend, but this was made impossible by last year's double-strike by Hollywood's actors and writers. However, it is also the case that the MCU, and the superhero genre more broadly, have had a very rough year and a half at this point, with Marvel's Phase Four clearly troubled by the time of Thor 4 (from which point on sequels were making 20 to 50 percent less in real terms than the films which preceded them), and Captain Marvel 2 proved a catastrophe, its global gross ultimately a mere 15 percent that of the original. As the situation stands, Disney-Marvel may still plan to have The Thunderbolts, at least, out on May 2, 2025, and may still succeed in doing that--but barring a turnaround in the fortunes of the franchise and the genre the results will only testify to the passing of their old market dominance.

* The films are, respectively, Iron Man) (2008) and its two sequels (2010, 2013), the first Thor movie (2011), the third Captain America movie (2016), the four Avengers films (2012, 2015, 2018, 2019), the second and third Guardians of the Galaxy movies (2017, 2023), and Dr. Strange 2 (2022). (Where the exceptional 2020-2021 period is concerned it is worth remembering that Black Widow was scheduled for the first weekend of May 2020, and delayed only by the pandemic, which had a sufficiently distorting effect on the summer of 2021 that the author of this post also does not count it as a "proper" summer.)
** The films in question were X-Men: Wolverine in 2009 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014. The sole years in which this did not occur were 2005 and 2006 (kicked off by Ridley Scott's historical epic Kingdom of Heaven, and Mission: Impossible III, respectively, both significant disappointments that ultimately underlined just how important the superhero film was to become in this period).

Can Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Be Another Top Gun: Maverick?

Recently reading what others have had to say about the prospects of Indiana Jones 5 I was struck by one possibility some have raised--that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny could, like Top Gun: Maverick, be a spectacular overperformer at the box office along similar lines as another follow-up to a "feel-good" '80s-era action blockbuster, with a star of the kind like they don't make anymore in the lead and plenty of nostalgic appeal, which through all this really connects with a moviegoing public that comes back to experience it over and over and over again.

I can see where they are coming from on this--but skeptical that Top Gun 2 is a good analog for Indiana Jones 5, for five reasons, three of which (numbers 1, 4 and 5) were pretty much ignored in the comment I read about last year's hit:

1. The memory of the original Top Gun was, in 2022, undimmed in the memories of fans by any exploitation after the original. By contrast Raiders of the Lost Ark has had three sequels, with both films three, and four, each giving the impression that it was "the last one" (with Indiana and company literally riding off into the sunset at the end of the "last" crusade, and then, in a movie redolent with the sense of Jones' time as adventurer as past, and now an assistant dean, married man and father)--and thus that anything further would not only go over the same ground yet again (as Crystal Skull seemed to be to many), but merely another go-round for the sake of a crass cash grab. It did not help that number four was received as less than a triumph (the film's audience score on Rotten Tomatoes a mere 53 percent). It also does not help that Disney's handling of Star Wars, the closest point of comparison to Indiana Jones 5 by far (the only really comparable franchise, likewise a Lucas-Ford show), has disappointed so many under the same exact management, and may be handling Jones the same way, the more in as some of the casting decisions weirdly similar to those of the divisive Star Wars movies (with Mads Mikkelsen again a man of uncertain loyalties working on a critical space project for a government at war, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge once more a "sidekick" to "Han Solo"). By contrast Top Gun 2 had no such baggage.

2. While much of the cultural, "zeitgeist"-type analysis of Top Gun 2 was simplistic (in line with the movie itself, frankly), there may be something to the argument that those who came out for it responded to the clear-cut good guys vs. bad guys premise and upbeat, Rah-rah spirit of the film. As recently described the James Mangold-helmed Indiana Jones 5 is expected to go in the opposite direction (if Logan was anything to go by, the extreme opposite direction), such that the same kind of satisfaction will simply not be on offer, and indeed, anyone looking for it is likely to come away feeling cheated--hardly the response Top Gun 2 elicited.

3. Just as one has to be cautious with talk of films and the zeitgeist, one has to be cautious in regard to the ways in which movie grosses interact with the country's culture wars--a very complex subject ill-served by the simplistic narratives constantly pushed on us--while I have seen lots of rhetoric but little hard data regarding Top Gun 2 specifically. (I have heard, for example, that like Taken the movie really exploded in the "Red" states and not so much the "Blue," but again, they had no hard data, or even industry insider comment, to offer in support of their claims.) Still, just as the Rah-rah spirit of the movie worked in its favor I will allow that Top Gun 2 may have had a boost in some quarters from its being perceived (rightly or wrongly) as a "conservative" film, perhaps to the point that going seemed in itself a way of "showing support for their side" and a rebuke to the other side. By contrast Indiana Jones 5 has been branded a "woke" film in some quarters, diminishing its appeal among those who went to see Top Gun 2 for such reasons. Of course, if "conservative" films have their audience, many a hit has also been scored on the basis of "wokeness" too--as with Black Panther or Captain Marvel--but I do not see Indy 5 as having that kind of cachet with that crowd, so there can be no compensating effect from that corner.

4. In the months leading up to Top Gun 2's release, through that release, and after, the media cheerled for the film as one (as seen not only in the 96 percent score it got from the critics on Rotten Tomatoes--as against the much poorer score the virtually identical original had from critics--but the commentary, where even what look like critical pieces at first glance turn out to be more "Rah-rah!"). Thus far Indy 5 has not had anything to compare with such support--and I see little sign of this changing in the three months between the time of this writing and the film's release.

5. When Top Gun 2 came out in the summer of 2022 it had the advantage of very weak summer competition--a mere three other tentpoles none of them a really stellar performer, which I am convinced permitted it its particularly strong legs. It hit theaters three weeks after a less than overwhelming Dr. Strange 2, and two weeks before a Jurassic World movie that did rather less well than its two predecessors, while Thor 4 came out four whole weeks later and had only a lackluster run, and was not followed by another equally big movie for months--which meant that much more room for Top Gun to keep drawing audiences (the movie's Friday-to-Sunday takes not slipping below the $10 million mark until its tenth weekend in release, on the way to its collecting a staggering six times what it took in its first weekend of play).

Indiana Jones 5 will not have anything close to that. It will come out a mere two weeks after The Flash, which, doing as well as the buzz suggests (prompting repeat viewings, good word-of-mouth, etc.), could have pretty good legs itself, while Mission: Impossible 7--which may be a stronger performer than usual given the good will toward Tom Cruise in the wake of the very same Top Gun 2 we have been talking about the whole time--will be along just two weeks after that, positioning each to take a bite out of Indy's grosses over its first three weekends, in a more generally crowded summer.

Of course, these factors--the weakening of interest in the franchise as a result of past missteps with Indiana Jones 4 and Disney's handling of Lucasfilm generally; the difference in tone, political associations and media attitude; and the more competitive summer season--do not guarantee that Indiana Jones 5 will not "overperform." However, if this were to happen (and admittedly I think it unlikely) it will not be on the basis of those factors that worked so much in Top Gun's favor, its success achieved in a different way and under different conditions.

The Summer Box Office 2022: A Commercial Consideration

Labor Day has come and gone, marking the end of summer, and making it possible to appraise the season in full.

Doing so it looks like there were no big surprises since the last post on the subject--the box office is recovering, but not all the way back to normal, with a particularly weak August underlining the fact. In 2022 dollars the average take in that month in 2015-2019 was a little over $1 billion. By contrast the August of 2022 took in less than half that much ($467 million). Added to the preceding months this made for a take of about $3.4 billion for the May-August period--as against $5 billion or so in a typical year after one adjusts the old figures for inflation.

In short, the box office revenue remained at least a third down from the usual for the four month period. (I emphasize "at least" because in so many of those prior years a mega-release in very late April took in as much as hundreds of millions that would have ordinarily been counted as part of May's take--not a factor in 2022.) However, it seems worth reiterating that this seems a reflection of the year's weaker than usual slate--not least in the season's having had a mere four big live-action action-adventure blockbusters rather than the usual eight or more, three of which turned out to be less than the performers some might have hoped for because of their various disadvantages. The two of those four belonging to the Marvel Cinematic Universe bespoke the decadence of a franchise already heavily mined for more than a decade. (Thus was it with the self-referential Dr. Strange 2--the plot of which may have more bound up with a small-screen annex of the saga than was a good bet for what had to be a general audience entertainment, while as with so many worn-out series' Thor proved self-parodying enough to likewise leave many less than pleased.) Meanwhile the third installment in the second Jurassic Park trilogy ended that once-mighty saga with a whimper rather than a bang.

The small number of films meant that not only was there less of what people expect to see in the summer but that the roll-out had run its course by early July with Thor 4's debut--where in other years it continues down into late July and often early August (one reason why August 2022 was so lackluster compared with its predecessors, not least the August of 2016 that had such a big boost from the early August launch of Suicide Squad). Of course, those films could have benefited from the lack of competition by their individually getting that much more custom than they would have in a more crowded summer--but this likely only really happened for one of them, Top Gun 2, to go by the extraordinary legs that added so powerfully to its take (the movie making $42 million in its third month of theatrical play, which counted toward its mighty $700 million haul by Labor Day, almost four and a half times what it took in over its holiday weekend debut in an extreme rarity these days). Again that movie proved that single films can still be hits on as grand a scale as in the pre-pandemic period, but all the same, there is that gap in the earnings--if plausibly because Hollywood's release schedule, after all the chaos to which production and distribution has been subject, and all the disappointments of 2020 and 2021, has not yet caught up with the readiness to go to the movies (I think, quite understandably).

Still, it seems plausible that the summer of 2023, which looks like it has the first really "normal" summer release slate since 2019 (Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Fast and Furious 10, Transformers 6, Indiana Jones 5, Mission: Impossible 7, Captain Marvel 2, Meg 2--plus new DC Comics-verse movies about the Blue Beetle and the Flash, not counting animated superhero epics that include a Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sequel and yet another big-screen Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, the opposite of the pattern in a live-action version of the animated classic The Little Mermaid, etc., etc., etc.), could, in the absence of further disasters, bring in the kind of overall gross to which the studios and theater chains have grown accustomed.

And of course, coming on top of the other virtually indistinguishable films squeezed into the preceding four months (more Marvel films in Kraven the Hunter and Ant-Man 3, another DC film in Shazaam 2, John Wick 4, yet another attempt to make a hit movie out of Disney's Haunted Mansion ride, another Super Mario Brothers movie three decades after the virtually forgotten first attempt), and the four months to follow (from Marvel Madame Web, a reboot of Blade and a sequel to Aquaman; a Willy Wonka prequel, a sequel to the recent Ghostbusters sequel, a fourth installment in the rebooted Star Trek series, a Star Wars film from Taikia Watiti, etc., etc., etc.), it will give those who are weary of the torrent of sequels and prequels, remakes and spin-offs abundant opportunity for, as Fred Costanza might call it, "the airing of grievances."

Those so inclined of course have my deepest sympathies--and may feel entirely free to do such airing in the comment thread.

Just How Long Have the Running Times of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Films Actually Been?

The reports of Captain Marvel 2 as the shortest film the Marvel Cinematic Universe had to date sent me checking the figures on that. Just checking the numbers at Box Office Mojo it appeared that the 32 prior Marvel Cinematic Universe films ranged in running time from 112 minutes (for 2008's The Incredible Hulk and 2013's Thor 2) to 181 minutes (for 2019's Avengers: Endgame). The average seems to have been 133 minutes for the whole sequence from the original 2008 Iron Man to Guardians of the Galaxy 3, though it should be noted that the movies have trended toward longer running times--with the Phase One average 124 minutes, the Phase Two average 126 minutes, the Phase Three average 136 minutes and the Phase Four average 139 minutes, working out to a 15 minute growth from Phase One to Phase Four.

Still, even allowing for the overall trend toward longer movies there are distinct patterns to the differences in length across phases. Those movies about a larger grouping, as with the four Avengers films (ranging from 141 to 181 minutes), Captain America: Civil War (143 minutes) or The Eternals (156 minutes), tend to be rather longer than those centered on a single character, and especially those introducing a new character, which tend to clock in at the low end of the range (115-125 minutes or so). The Phase Four-released Captain Marvel was no exception to the pattern, coming as it did to just 123 minutes.

One also sees a tendency to brevity in the lighter, more comedy-oriented films. Certainly the Ant-Man films tended to run shorter than the average (averaging about two hours versus the 133 minute norm for the saga), with this also going for the notoriously silly Thor 4 (which clocked in at just 118 minutes).

As The Marvels has a tighter focus and lighter tone it seems natural for it to tend toward a shorter running time, to run for a little under two hours rather than a lumbering two-and-a-half. However, it is still something of a surprise to see a Phase Five sequel clock in at 18 minutes shorter than the original Captain Marvel, and about a quarter shorter than the usual Phase Four running time.

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 gross in the $250-$500 million. 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 (equal to about what the 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).

The Summer Movie Season of 2023: Predictions

Last summer, during which it seemed fairly clear that the American and global box office were both recovering, the take still fell short of what the industry hoped for--in large part, in my view, because there were fewer than the usual number of big "tentpole" releases. (There were just Dr. Strange 2, Jurassic Park 3/6, Top Gun 2 and Thor 4, with the quiver empty after early July--four releases stretched thin over the first two months or so instead of a more evenly spread out eight over the four month period.)

By contrast the summer of 2023 looks to be on par with pre-pandemic summers in this respect, with Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Fast and Furious 10, Mission: Impossible 7, Transformers 6, The Flash and even Indiana Jones 5 coming our way in May-July, with Meg 2 and Blue Beetle coming in August.

Will these do the trick?

The Guardian series is relatively well-received ("worst" Chris and all), but box office-wise more Thor than Avengers--while Marvel's brand has not been looking its best lately. The Transformers franchise is even more clearly "not what it used to be." Blue Beetle is an "upgrade" of a formerly straight-to-streaming release about another second-stringer (as an alternative to the cancellation seen with Batgirl), and seems a particular long shot for a first-rank hit. And as I have said earlier, I am not very optimistic about Indiana Jones 5, which I think may fall into that ever-larger territory of "huge gross by any sane standard, but arguable flop given what it cost to make, what it netted at the end, and the expectations people must have had for it" (the way that, for example, Ant-Man 3 or Black Panther 2 have done, and maybe not even with more cash in the till).

That leaves the other three. If MI7 may do as well as its predecessors I do not expect to see it better those movies, which do well enough by spy-fi standards but fall short of the absolute top (though a billion dollar take does not seem wholly out of the question, if mainly as a function of rising ticket prices, although I can also picture it getting a bump from good will from the press and from fans of Top Gun 2 toward Tom Cruise). And Fast and Furious 10 will probably do better--though not necessarily beat its predecessors (impressive as their earnings have been).

That leaves The Flash. Apparently the feature film about the character has really, really great buzz--the buzz actually holding it to be better than any DC Universe film seen in a long time, maybe the best of the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) lot, maybe better than anything since Christopher Nolan's Batman films (the assumption, of course, being that these were superlative, an opinion I share less and less ). Still, the Flash is no Batman or Wonder Woman, I suspect no character is completely immune to superhero fatigue and DC Universe fatigue, and the DC Extended Universe as we know it is known to be on its way out, while I suspect the earlier, absolutely terrible, publicity attaching to the person in question(which less than a year ago had people talking of "cancellation" of the film and its star) will not be conveniently and completely forgotten eleven weeks from now. A wildly successful Flash movie is therefore no sure thing, no matter how good it supposedly is--but it may have more potential to surprise observers than anything else.

All the same, even with The Flash proving a hit--even its proving the biggest hit in DCEU history--I expect that all this will add up to a summer that, while clearly better than any of the last three years, looks more like a mediocre pre-pandemic summer than a sensational one.

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.