The American Box Office, 2013: Three Observations

The title of this post says it all--these are just three observations I had about the American box office this past year.

1. Hollywood Has Overestimated Nostalgia For The '80s Action Film--But Not The Nostalgia For The Essence Of Those Films.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone flopped separately (in Last Stand and Bullet to the Head) before going on to flop together (in Escape Plan). The same went for A Good Day to Die Hard, the critically and commercially weakest performer in the series, and one might add, the Bruce Willis starrer Red 2. Only lower budgets, and the surprising strength of overseas earnings (reaching up to 80 percent of the total gross), made the difference between financial loss and modest success in the best of cases.1

Interestingly, this has happened as something of the spirit of the paramilitary films of that era resurged in recent years, most obviously in a string of recent hits prominently featuring the U.S. Navy SEALs in action abroad--like Act of Valor, Zero Dark Thirty, Captain Phillips and Lone Survivor--a stark contrast with Hollywood's previous ambivalent, often critical movies about terrorism and the Middle East (Syriana, Lions for Lambs, Green Zone, etc.).2 Something of this same spirit is evident, too, in the success of Olympus Has Fallen (one of two "Die Hard in the White House" movies this past year), the G.I. Joe movies (based on the kiddie version of '80s action film), and the Iron Man film series, the protagonist of which, more than most comic book heroes, plays the Lone American Warrior fighting the Foreign Enemy.

This is unsurprising given the parallels between the present and the post-Vietnam era, when the U.S. also suffered frustration in overseas military operations, increased economic pain and sharpened anxieties about national decline, and rightist populism ran strong. Hollywood's continuing to produce more films of this type, and audiences' continuing to attend them, will be equally unsurprising.

2. Marvel's Gamble on The Avengers Continued to Pay Off at Theaters.
Marvel's establishment of three superhero franchises (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America) as a basis for launching The Avengers payed off big in 2012 with the biggest hit at the American and world box offices since Avatar. However, its direct earnings are not the only measure of its influence, the film's success apparently having succeeded in boosting the performance of the associated superhero franchises. While Iron Man 2 left a bad taste in the mouths of even confirmed fans, Iron Man 3 made a staggering $400 million in the United States, helped by enthusiasm for the 2012 film. Thor: The Dark World similarly saw a marked improvement on the gross of the first film, taking in over $200 million, a more than 30 percent rise.3

One can expect that Captain America: Winter Soldier, due out this April, will also get a helpful bump. Even were that not to be the case, it would still be safe to say that the complex of Avengers-connected films represent the largest ever commercial success for the superhero film genre, which (financially, if in no other way) is still going from strength to strength over a decade after the first X-Men film, with no end in sight.

3. Hardcore Science Fiction (and Fantasy) Remains a Risky Proposition.
We are constantly told that science fiction is king of the box office. And of course, films about superheroes (Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, Thor: The Dark World, Wolverine), family-friendly animated comedic fantasies (Despicable Me 2, Monsters University, Frozen, The Croods), zombies (World War Z), the continued mining of beloved older cinematic phenomena (Oz the Great and Powerful, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug) and a certain post-apocalyptic young adult adventure drama (Catching Fire) indisputably remained at the very top in 2013.

Nonetheless, the boosters forget an important corollary to the rule, namely that the requisite big budgets and the fickleness of audiences toward the genre has consistently made hardcore science fiction falling outside these categories--thoroughly futuristic movies, space-set movies--a high-risk endeavor for would-be filmmakers. This past year was no exception to the rule, the responses to Oblivion, After Earth, Pacific Rim, Elysium, the third Riddick film and Ender's Game were on the whole underwhelming, while the response to Star Trek: Into Darkness was likewise something of a disappointment by the standards of blockbuster sequels.4

Additionally, while those other genres were less intensively mined this year, the same has been the case with movies like the fairy tale-based Jack the Giant Slayer, the historical fantasy 47 Ronin, and the Western The Lone Ranger (the biggest flop of the year), which underlined the hesitation of American audiences to follow Hollywood to other eras and faraway lands.

In short, unless they have a really compelling reason to do so (like a solid connection to one of those rare properties that has previously proven a strong exception to this rule, or the light touch of a Disney cartoon), U.S. moviegoers strongly prefer to find their adventure in the contemporary world, and particularly in contemporary America--with just a little science fiction or fantasy tossed in.

1. Escape Plan did much better overseas, particularly in China, where it grossed a solid $40 million (as compared with the $25 million it picked up in the States), raising the global take to $130 million--quite acceptable because of the film's $50 million budget. The fifth Die Hard movie also managed a $300 million global gross, again tolerable in light of its $92 million budget.
2. While the Navy SEALs have long been well known to the American public, such intense interest in the unit may be unprecedented in recent American history--a thing analogous, perhaps, to the British cult of the SAS John Newsinger analyzed in Dangerous Men: The SAS and Popular Culture.
3. And of course, each film saw a comparable boost overseas. Iron Man 3 made $1.2 billion globally, about twice what its predecessors did, and not much less than The Avengers; while the second Thor film took in over $630 million worldwide, a 40 percent improvement over the first film's performance.
4. Of course, Pacific Rim and Star Trek 2 were saved by strong foreign grosses. Meanwhile Gravity, the sole unqualified success among this lot, was the least like a Big Summer Blockbuster in concept and style, and also the least likely to provide a basis for replicable success.

The Profitability of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Phase Three--and Afterward

Taken together Deadline's lists of the most profitable movies of the year from 2015 on give those of us who are not studio insiders a better-than-usual picture of the economics of the blockbuster because they go beyond production budgets and box office grosses to a fuller accounting of costs and revenues, at least at the top of the market. In the process they give us a fairly good picture of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's commercial performance, precisely because it has been so prominent at the top, with this going in particular for Phase Three--ten of the MCU's eleven third phase films making Deadline's lists, which is to say, all but Ant-Man 2 (an omission unlikely to skew the picture very much even if we had the numbers, given its lower cost and lower earnings).

Going by Deadline's numbers Disney-Marvel expended some $5.6 billion on the ten films listed here, counting everything from production, to prints and ads, to overhead and interest, to video costs, to participations and residuals. Beyond those expenses it made some $3.5 billion from theatrical rentals, home entertainment, streaming/TV--a better than sixty percent "cash-on-cash" return for the lot. Granted, this was money in yesteryear's prices spread out in rather uneven fashion over many years, but making some account of inflation it seems to me that we still have a $7 billion or so outlay in March 2023 dollars, and over $4 billion in earnings above that outlay, not changing the proportions much.*

All of this only underlines what a force to be reckoned with the MCU was at its height, commercially speaking. Of course, this was disproportionately due to the two-part Avengers battle with Thanos, which took in $1.4 billion in estimated profit in 2018-2019 (and $1.7 billion in real terms in today's dollars), but even without them I calculate the average for the other non-Avengers movies discussed here as (helped by the particular successes of Spider-Man: Far From Home, Black Panther and Captain Marvel) in the vicinity of $275 million in today's terms (and even the weaker Ant-Man 2 unlikely to drag this down much were it included).

The result is a very high standard of profitability indeed--the kind that no reasonable person can expect to see go on for any franchise for very long, and which Disney especially should not have expected to see go on forever given its experience with Star Wars--in which Episode VII made over a $900 million profit, and then Solo made a $77 million (or even worse) loss just two-and-a-half years later, a literal billion dollar drop in returns.

The MCU has yet to have its Solo, of course, and I am not sure that it will, the MCU perhaps too big for even a failure that severe and that unambiguous to stop in its tracks (especially so long as the films bring viewers to Disney's streaming service, and help to keep MCU merchandise selling). All the same, this puts into perspective the performance of its most recent movies. Thor 4 and Black Panther 2 were still money-makers, but brought in just half the profit their predecessors did, while looking at Ant-Man 3's theatrical performance it seems possible that it might barely break even, or lose a little money, even with the home entertainment-type revenue counted in, while the upcoming releases of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and The Marvels may be up against significant headwinds, and any Avengers vs. Thanos-caliber event, or even Spider-Man: No Way Home-caliber event, looking a long way off as of April 2023.

The fact matters the more because even if this is cause for anxiety rather than full-blown disaster, Disney faces so many problems on so many different fronts. The company is now coping not just with the hole in its balance sheet made not just by the pandemic (which took a toll on its movies like everyone else's), but also reckless overspending on for-streaming content (admittedly a problem everyone else had), the shaky results of its investment in Lucasfilm as of late (with Indiana Jones 5 not a sure winner and the plans for the Star Wars franchise on the big screen remaining unsettled year in, year out), and the massive losses in its original mainstay of animation (with Strange World and Lightyear together losing the studio over $300 million all by themselves, on top of the money almost certainly lost by the hugely expense yet straight-to-streaming Turning Red). All of that means that it really, really needs wins here, and these are getting to be fewer and smaller.

* I adjusted the figures by converting the figures’ value in the month of the movie’s release for March 2023 prices using the Consumer Price Index and got $6.7 billion in costs, $4.1 billion in return-on-cash--a method that seemed sufficiently rough to merit rounding to the nearest billion to be on the safe side.

The James Bond Franchise's Trajectory and the Marvel Cinematic Universe

With Phase Three's routinization of billion-dollar grosses (and $5 billion off just the two-part Avengers battle with Thanos!) the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) recently represented the epitome of what a popular franchise could achieve at the box office. (Snobs snickered about "Marvel envy" as they watched Warner Bros., Universal and others try to have similar success, but there were excellent reasons for the envy, from a business standpoint at least.)

Of course, no reasonable person could expect Phase Three-caliber success to go on forever, any more than any other comparable pop cultural sensation (or business success) can go on forever. The pandemic probably did quicken the end of the good times (my own prediction in 2019 was that Black Widow was 2020's surest bet for a billion dollar gross, and I think it probably would have grossed a billion in today's dollars if it had not been for the pandemic), but all the same Phase Four was pretty anti-climactic after that the big Avengers two-parter, while Phase Five has yet to show much sign of restoring "Marvel supremacy." Indeed, I wonder if there is not already a rush to end it and get on with Phase Six--though even allowing for the prospect of recovery getting the MCU's box office draw back to its Phase Three level is a tall order, with nothing quite like the boom years of 2016-2019 to be seen again (because, commercially at least, they really were that spectacular), and that those years will continue to be recognizable as Marvel's commercial peak.

Of course, that fact does not spell the end of the MCU by any means, with the James Bond series--because this was not only the first of the high-concept action-adventure blockbusters as we now know them, but because having run so long it has probably already gone where the other franchises eventually will (as consideration of the handling of Star Wars, for example, demonstrates)--a useful point of reference here. As it happened the Bond series peaked in the mid-1960s, with Thunderball and You Only Live Twice, after which there was more caution in laying out the money, because grosses were not what they had been (Twice, the highest-cost film made to date, and the first to bring in less than its predecessor, such that points of comparison afterward would be few). But the franchise went on cranking out new Bond films. For a half century, and counting.

It is a reminder that a series can go on for a very long time indeed after ticket sales slip. Still, the Bond series did so in a different time, when the economics of filmmaking were different, and the market was different. Through the late '60s, and well into the '70s, there was nothing quite like them from the standpoint of action-adventure spectacle, which probably helped a great deal in their lingering on. Moreover, if when such competition arrived the series suffered for it (the '80s, certainly, a low point for the series commercially, especially but not just in the U.S.), there was even in the '90s more room for the franchise to rally than it enjoys today. Moreover, after a mere four films, and a quashed attempt at a spin-off (in the unmade Jinx Johnson adventures), the producers thought a reboot in order--which was to see a mere five films cranked out between 2002 and the present, with the disappointing response to the last of those films giving the producers pause about a next attempt likely to be many more years off.

It is all a far cry from the MCU's cranking out three $200 million+ headline movies year in, year out in the expectation of takers, with a vast patchwork of tie-ins also going (as in the streaming TV series). Still, for the time being the movies, if not pulling in what they used to do, are among the more profitable films around, with Doctor Strange 2 #4, Black Panther #2 and Thor 4 #9 on Deadline's list of money-makers last year (even the last delivering a cash-on-cash return of over $100 million), which would seem quite enough to have the other studios still suffering from "Marvel envy." The issue, though, is how long the MCU's films can go on doing that well, with the trend of the returns on an immense investment so evidently downward--and I would add, more at issue than the fate of this one franchise. I cannot say for certain just how much "superhero fatigue" is out there (I actually expected it to have finished the wave of superhero films long before this point), but it seems to me that the broader pattern of blockbuster filmmaking may well be in trouble--like the old-style Hollywood musical in the late '60s. If that proves to be the case then the MCU's problems will be of a nature far, far more fundamental than the mismanagement or overexploitation of a single franchise.

Are People Wrong to Think a Major Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Has to Make a Billion Dollars to Be a Success?

One film critic of which I know, addressing the question of whether this or that big-budget superhero film was a success, tells his readers that not every such movie has to make a billion dollars--and as the Marvel Cinematic Universe amassed its recent track record, told them this so many times that it almost seems a ritual with him.

In fairness there is a sense in which he is right. In spite of falling short of the billion dollar mark such films have actually been among their year's most profitable releases (at least, to go by Deadline's calculations), as if a $250 million epic making a "mere" $800 million in theaters will not break even on ticket sales alone, there is the considerable revenue to be had from home entertainment, streaming, TV to fill in the gap, and even put it over the top.

Still, is the expectation of a billion dollar gross--and the sense that a movie pulling in less than that is less than a success--so illegitimate?

I would say that it is not--that, in fact, it is quite natural given the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starting with the success of The Avengers in 2012, a $1.5 billion smash that summer (which would be more like a $2 billion gross in today's terms), and what it seemed to do for the associated franchises. The next summer Iron Man 3, following up two films that had had grosses in the $600 million range, pulled in as much as the two movies combined, taking in a near-Avengers-level gross of $1.2 billion (almost $1.6 billion in 2023 terms). From that point on billion dollar grosses actually did become routine for the franchise, with, alongside the Avengers sequels that hit new heights (Avengers 3 and 4 together taking in almost $5 billion in 2018-2019, more like $6 billion today), Captain America 3, Black Panther and Captain Marvel--and Spider-Man: Far From Home--were all bona fide billion-dollar hits.

The result is that a billion dollar gross became routine for the Marvel films in the wake of their Phase 2/Phase 3 performance, and yes, whether or not those grosses continued mattered. going even beyond the immediate contribution to the bottom line (lest it need saying, yes, a difference of billions matters), such expectations conditioned what others were prepared to pay for the distribution and merchandising rights to the associated content--and what the backers of those movies were prepared to put into them--and accordingly what they had to make back in order to stay viable at the same level, even before one considered the implications of inflation for the meaning of film grosses in real terms. The result was that not only did the falling grosses pointedly evident from Thor 4 on bespeak the decline of the MCU as a box office draw, but they meant a significant contraction in profitability insofar as anyone can discern it, and that for a beleaguered studio in a beleaguered industry that can hardly afford to see any of its profit centers suffer, with all that implies for the MCU, for Marvel, for Disney, and for all those whose livelihoods are bound up with them.

The 2023 Box Office in Review

Back in 2023, looking at the prior year's track record with qualified successes such as Venom and No Time to Die, and the indisputable blockbuster that was Spider-Man: No Way Home; and the current year's Top Gun 2, Avatar 2 and Marvel films (Dr. Strange 2, Thor 4, Black Panther 2, which if suggestive of Marvel being past its peak still took in $1.2 billion domestically); it seemed to me that the box office was returning to its pre-pandemic norm, more or less--that people were for the most part going to the movies again in the same fashion as before, to see essentially the same films as before, to go by how the big franchise films led the way, and indeed claimed an even larger share of the box office gross than they had prior to the pandemic. Indeed, it seemed to me that if the real box office gross in 2022 was not much more than half the norm for the years 2015-2019 (about 54-55 percent of the figure) this was a matter of the release slate in 2022 being relatively thin, with 2023's being packed with blockbusters likely to take the box office the rest of the way back to the pre-pandemic average, or close to it.*

Alas, 2023 proved a big surprise that way. Yes, the recovery continued, but only to a very limited extent, the gross, adjusted for inflation, a little less than two-thirds of the 2015-2019 average; with this connected to the way that those big franchise films that had led the recovery through late 2021 and 2022 began to consistently disappoint.** Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was only a slight underperformer that will, in the end, be one of the year's bigger successes--but movies like The Flash, Indiana Jones 5, Captain Marvel 2, Aquaman 2 put in performances that, from the perspective of their franchises, were the equivalent of Solo: A Star Wars Story's crashing and burning back in the summer of 2018, while other films like Fast and Furious 10, Transformers 7 and Mission: Impossible 7 did not do much better than that (the last, a series low). Indeed, the box office ended up being carried not by the franchise films but by more idiosyncratic successes--The Super Mario Bros. Movie in the spring, and Barbie and Oppenheimer in the summer (and in its own way, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse too), while the absence of hits on that scale meant that the recovery slowed significantly in the fall. (Where for the first eight months of the year the 2023 box office was in real terms 20 percent higher than in the equivalent period in 2022 in the last four it was just 8 percent higher--and would have been worse for lack of such modest but helpful surprises as Five Nights at Freddy's and the record-breaking concert film Taylor Swift: The Era Tour.)

In short, Hollywood remains a very long way from its old grosses, while its method for ever getting there is very much in question now, given that the traditional would-be blockbusters are not bringing in people like they used to do in a manner not seen since the decline of the historical epic and the musical way back in the '60s, and at the same time smaller films are getting to be a tougher sell generally (the audience rejecting not just The Flash but Blue Beetle). Naturally, the road ahead in 2024--a year which offers a franchise blockbuster-heavy slate similar to 2023--does not promise much better, the more in as the pattern of franchise failure is more firmly established (recall that back in February 2023 even an Ant-Man 3 could pull in $200 million domestically, which seems like a real longshot now), and a good many important releases by the strikes of 2023 uncompensated by the bumping of some of 2023's movies into 2024 (so that this year Hollywood will have to do without the grosses of Marvel's Captain America 4 and The Thunderbolts, Mission: Impossible 8, the live-action Snow White adaptation and even Avatar 3). Additionally, admitting that such things are by their nature surprises, anything that has even a whiff of potential Barbie-like success about it (with the consequences of that already demonstrated by the weak grosses of these past four months) seems absent. The result is that I anticipate no great improvement in 2024 over 2023. Indeed, there might even be a fall in the gross from this year's level, as the offerings discussed here fail to tempt audiences back to the theaters to even the extent that they managed to do so last year.

Still, I see no turnaround in studio practice anytime soon, while I expect that the claqueurs of the entertainment press will for the most part grade everything on a curve as they encourage everyone to look on the bright side of things.

* A bit under $7.4 billion in 2022, adjusted for 2023 values the gross (I refer here to the "in calendar" gross as reported by Box Office Mojo, with whose numbers I am working here) was $7.6 billion--against the $14 billion average for 2015-2019 when one makes a similar adjustment for inflation.
** The gross in 2023 was $8.9 billion, about 64 percent of the $14 billion 2015-2019 average.

Is the Media Trying Harder to Convince Us That Cinematic Flops Have Been Hits?

Not long ago I wrote about how film critics have become much more prone to give good reviews of films this past decade or so--in spite of the fact that no one (well, not anyone sane) seems to think film has actually got better (and many regarding the situation as having got worse, artistically).

These days it seems that the coddling of the film industry by the entertainment press extends to a similar bias in regard to appraisal not just of the quality of films, but their commercial performances--attempting to convince us that a move that, relative to the investment of resources in it and the expectations held for it, may actually have been a disappointment, was actually a success, more frequently than it might have done before. (Just off the top of my head I can recall such cases being made this year for The Batman and Thor 4 and Black Adam, with Black Panther 2 starting to seem to me a candidate for the same treatment.)

The motivation for this seems obvious enough. All other things being equal (for instance, if there isn't a bottom-line advantage in treating something as a failure, like the preference for taking a tax break on Batgirl to actually finishing and releasing the movie) no business wants its product, no Artist or Suits wants their creation, to be called a failure--and the press is highly accommodating that way. At the same time there is a desire to present films one personally favors--or wants to be seen as favoring--as successes; to depict the public as sharing their tastes and valuations. (Thus did the "woke" crow over Wonder Woman and Black Panther, while the right crowed over Top Gun 2, with neither much interested in the abundance of details of the films and their reception that complicate their triumphalism.) And the last three years have created enormous ambiguity about just what counts as a success. (People have very short memories--but the near-normal box office of the summer of 2022 was a long way from the still severely hobbled box office of 2021.) The result is that it was easier for people to come to the conclusions they wanted to draw.

Still, that what the mainstream of entertainment journalists says so often seems at odds with the reality--in this case, a more easily checkable reality than aesthetic appraisals (box office grosses and reported budgets are only part of the story, but plenty to enable even amateurs to make reasonable guesses about success and failure)--likely adds to the cynicism about the mainstream media and the bitterness of the culture wars in which argument about any given Friday's release has become so prominent.

What Will Deadpool 3 Make at the Box Office? (A Very Tentative Prediction for Entertainment Purposes Only)

The past year has been a more than usually chaotic one for film release schedules, given the disruption of Hollywood's first "double strike" (by both the actors and writers) since 1960, compelling the delay of work on a good many movie productions to the point of bumping their release dates from 2024 into 2025.

One result is that while this year will, as usual, have plenty of superhero stuff and even Marvel stuff (particularly Spider-Man-related stuff, like Madame Web, Venom 3, Kraven the Hunter, milking that most consistently successful franchise), there will only be one proper Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) release, Deadpool 3.

How well can we expect it to do?

For a start, we can look at how past Deadpool films have done.

The first Deadpool movie made $363 million domestically, and a total of $782 million worldwide, back in 2016--which works out to a $470 million hit at home, and a billion-dollar global gross when we adjust for December 2023 prices (a feat the more impressive because there was no Chinese release).

The second Deadpool movie made just a little less--$318 million domestically, $735 million globally, or in December 2023 prices, about $387 million domestically and just under $900 million globally.

Thinking in terms of the average of the two films we would get a gross of $430 million domestically, and around $950 million globally--sensational numbers. If we instead see the trend of decline suggested by the drop in gross from the first film to the second continue we can, anticipating a Deadpool 2-like drop from its predecessor, picture the movie making over $300 million+ domestically, and $800 million globally. This is less sensational, but still very, very good for a Deadpool movie--and indeed way better than what one can expect for a superhero movie, a Marvel movie, a franchise movie after the disastrous year of 2023.

That said, let us look at those expectations more closely. While the tendency toward franchise films in the superhero, spy-fi and associated genres crashing and burning has been broadly evident across Hollywood's output (the DCEU suffered, too, and so did Indiana Jones, and the Fast and Furious, and Mission: Impossible), to the point of making the kind of collapse that Solo represented for the Star Wars series now routine, let us focus in on the MCU specifically. Marvel's late Phase Four and early Phase Five films (from Thor 4 through Guardians of the Galaxy 3) showed 20 to 50 percent drops in their global grosses compared with the immediate predecessors in their series'. Already bad enough in itself, Captain Marvel 2 (aka The Marvels), which has pretty much finished its run with $200 million in the till (against the $1.1 billion the original picked up in 2019), saw an even worse 85 percent collapse (after adjustment for inflation).

A 20 to 50 percent collapse from Deadpool 2's gross would leave the movie with about $450-$700 million worldwide--which graded on the curve most now seem to be using would not be too bad (especially at the high end of the range). A Captain Marvel 2-like 85 percent collapse would leave it with just $150 million in the till, which would be a new low for the battered MCU.

For now these two figures--$150 million and $700 million--seem to me to represent the most extreme possibilities. I do not, at this point, see reason to think Deadpool 3 will suffer as badly as Captain Marvel 2 did. After all, even Aquaman 2, for all its troubles, is doing considerably better, showing that even now $200 million is not the ceiling for such films (Aquaman 2, flop that it may be, is on its way to grossing twice that), and Captain Marvel 2 had a very great deal working against it (production delays, an awkward tie-in with small-screen Marvel, rather weak early promotion, a sharp change in tone from the predecessor, etc.), more than Deadpool probably will.

At the same time I know no reason to think that Deadpool will manage to go very far in bucking the broader trend. The first movie, and even the second, seemed to command some real affection from fans, who may be more willing to give a new Deadpool movie a chance than other "usual" Marvel releases, but this sequel will still be hitting theaters six years after the last film (which itself, again, had shown some evidences of the fan base's erosion), in a time in which Marvel is looking very tarnished indeed and superhero fatigue is not so easily denied as the claqueurs would have us believe. The result is that, with the release still four months off and a lot possibly happening between now and then I find myself looking toward the middle of the range I have cited above--between the relatively slight Guardians of the Galaxy drop, and the extreme Captain Marvel drop. The result is that, for the time being, the safest guess seems to be that the movie's gross will be in the $400-$450 million range (while I would add that given the trend of things it is easier to see the movie doing worse than better).

"I Don't Wanna Hear About No Superhero Fatigue!"

There are times when the entertainment media seems to represent movies as bigger successes than they are--grading box office performance on a curve.

This does not seem to have been the case with Captain Marvel 2, the press--which had loudly anticipated a flop before the film's release--calling the film a flop after that first weekend in release (and still more, the second).

However, those "analyses" of the film's performance I have encountered seem to be doing so as part of a particular game--emphasizing that yes, this particular superhero movie is a flop, but one should not draw any wider conclusions from that. Chalk this one up as a misfire suggestive of nothing more than slightly better management over at Marvel could easily fix--not superhero fatigue.

Yet consider the undeniable pattern since the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)'s Phase Three wrapped up back in 2019. Of the MCU movies released since only one really went "above and beyond" at the box office--Spider-Man in December 2021. Of course, one could reasonably chalk up the lackluster performance of its three predecessors (Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi) to the effect of the pandemic and the associated experimentation with streaming (and at the global level, Marvel's shutout from the Chinese market, even if in fairness Marvel should have understood what it was getting into there), but it was also the case that Dr. Strange 2 looked like an underperformer given how well the Spider-Man film it was tied in with had just done, and the fainter than usual competition that season. And everything since has been unambiguously less successful, with the four next MCU sequels (Thor 4, Black Panther 2, Ant-Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 3), when the grosses are adjusted for inflation, down 20 to 50 percent from the grosses of the preceding films in their series'. Now Captain Marvel 2 seems almost certain to do worse than that. (Going by my estimates its gross could end up 80 percent down from what the first Captain Marvel made.)

And of course, what has been bad for the MCU has been worse for its principal rival, the DC Extended Universe, which saw Black Adam get a weak reception (failing to crack $400 million global), Shazam 2 make the third-stringer performance of the first Shazam look like boffo b.o. by comparison, and The Flash . . . well, it was pretty shocking back in June, though now we are used to such performances.

This seems to me like a pretty consistent pattern of weak performances by such films--the more in as, in contrast with the 2020-2021 period other movies are becoming really vast successes (as The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Barbie did, for example).

Considering all that my only objection to talk of superhero fatigue is that it understates the problem when we look at a year in which along with the declining grosses of the superhero films Fast and Furious, Transformers, Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible also suffered. Superhero fatigue is really a subset of a wider franchise fatigue and action movie fatigue and blockbuster fatigue, which fatigue for the moment shows no sign of abating--while being a thing Hollywood, and the claqueurs of the entertainment press, can still less afford to admit given how much more deeply threatening it is to the model by which they have made so much money for so long, and for which the increasingly battered studios have absolutely no substitute at hand as they try to keep themselves afloat.

Will Guardians of the Galaxy 3's Legs Hold Up? (A Box Office Prediction About Guardians of the Galaxy 3's Third Weekend--and Fast X's First)

After a disappointing debut Guardians of the Galaxy 3 had a better than expected second weekend--its gross over the weekend sliding, at last calculation, just under 48 percent from the level of the previous weekend (as against the 67-70 percent drops in first-to-second weekend gross that the last three Marvel Cinematic Universe sequels had seen). The general expectation seems to be that this pattern will continue to hold, with Boxoffice Pro anticipating a $30 million+ third weekend that will raise Guardians of the Galaxy's take to over $267 million.

Assuming this to be the case, what would it mean for the film's overall performance? Let us consider not merely weekends, but weeks. In its first Monday-to-Sunday period after the first weekend, which gave the film its better than expected gross of $215 million as of last Sunday, the film took in about $96.3 million. Boxoffice Pro's anticipation suggests a $52.8 million take in the following seven day period, a mere 45 percent drop. Assuming the 45 percent week-on-week drops continue (so that at the end of the fourth weekend the movie has $297 million in the till, $313 million at the end of the fifth, etc.) the film will top out in the vicinity of $330 million domestically.

Where the global situation is concerned the calculation is trickier. Still, the film's earnings have been a bit more robust than usual overseas. Where the prior two Guardians films made 22-33 percent more internationally than they did at home the recent film, to date, has been making more like 50 percent more. Assuming that holds up the film's international take could be in the vicinity of $495 million. Added to the domestic gross that works out to a global take of some $825 million.

These assumptions are not without their element of optimism. (For all we know the bump the film had the second weekend might not last, the grosses eroding more quickly from here on out.) But they are still within the $700-$875 million range discussed here as plausible last week (indeed, near the middle of that range).

Expect the press to make the most of the $800 million+ gross should it happen, comparing it favorably with the grosses of the prior two films--though the reality would be more mixed. Today's prices are not those of 2013, or even 2017, and in real terms an $825 million take, or even an $875 million take, would leave the movie the lowest grossing of the trilogy by a not insignificant margin (the original Guardians made a little under a billion in today's terms, Guardians 2 over a billion), and it does not do to gloss over the fact. However, it would constitute a more modest drop from the gross of the prior film than has been seen for other Marvel movies (a drop of perhaps a fifth, as against the quarter-drop Thor 4 suffered, the over one-third drop suffered by Ant-Man 3, the drop in real gross of about half suffered by Black Panther 2).

Considering this it seems worth noting the possible implications for the next really major summer movie, Fast X. The Boxoffice Pro prediction regarding the film has broadened--with the floor now lowered to $58 million. Suggestive of a final North American take that may be under $150 million, the more in as the chances of its surprising everyone with even Guardians of the Galaxy-like legs are not great (a "leggy run" is by definition a rarity, and by its third weekend the competition will be thickening, with the most anticipated movie of the summer, the next animated Spider-Man, hitting theaters then), the film is admittedly expected to make three to four times as much overseas. Still, this would easily leave it under the $800 million mark--while the production budget has been reported as high as $340 million (which is to say, almost a $100 million more than a Guardians of the Galaxy movie expected to make at least as much). We now hear that Fast and Furious 11 is due out in 2025--but, barring the greatest studio bull-headedness about sticking to franchises even after they have ceased to pay, that combination of falling grosses and rising costs seems bound to have consequences for those plans.

Will There Be a Star Wars Movie in 2023? Probably Not

Ever since Solo: A Star Wars Story flopped back in 2018 the only Star Wars film to make it to the big screen has been The Rise of Skywalker--a reflection of how that financial catastrophe forced a Big Rethink of the earlier glib notion of making Star Wars into a Marvel-like movie machine (which, if matching Marvel, might have had a dozen movies out by now instead, even with the pandemic and everything else happening). Very early on I--and I would imagine, pretty much everyone not taking a paycheck from the ever-more claqueur-like entertainment press--got into the habit of taking the report of every upcoming new Star Wars film with the proverbial grain of salt. So did it go for the recent reports of as many as four Star Wars movies recently in the works, two of which projects seem to have been officially confirmed defunct this week (Patty Jenkins' Rogue Squadron, along with another production being overseen by the now-departed Kevin Feige). That still leaves the movies by Taika Waititi (you know, the guy you can thank for Thor 4), and the Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy movie supposed to be scripted by Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson. I cannot rule out that those movies will still happen--but I do not think that Waititi's movie, if it gets made, will be out by December this year as earlier reported, while even if everything goes right for the Obaid-Chinoy movie I see no sign it will come out by then either. The result is that there will probably not be a Star Wars film out until 2024--if then. In the meantime Star Wars will remain very active indeed on the small screen, which may, in spite of the continued commitment to theatrical release in the wake of their experiments with the alternatives underlining that there is simply no substitute for a $20 ticket, continue to increasingly be the franchise's principal and natural home, just as it has ever been for the other big "Star" franchise, Star Trek.

What Can We Expect for Guardians of the Galaxy 3 at the Box Office?

Once again a Guardians of the Galaxy sequel is due that first weekend of May generally regarded as the start of the summer box office race.

How is it likely to do?

Considering that let us start with its predecessors. Put into 2022 dollars the take for the first (2013) Guardians would come to $970 million or so (with a 43/57 percent domestic/foreign split), and that for Guardians 2 (2017) about $1.03 billion (with a 45/55 domestic/foreign split). The result is that they averaged about $1 billion in today's terms--if with a bit of a bump between the first and second films, mainly on the domestic side (the film's earnings surging from $420 to almost $470 million here, as foreign sales held more or less steady in the $550-$570 million range).

Based on that one might expect the movie to make another billion or so, and maybe even a little more than that, given the promise of a trilogy being rounded out and positive reaction to the trailers. Still, audience responsiveness to the MCU has been eroding, with Ant-Man 3, well, looking very disappointing indeed, falling short not just of the billion dollars optimists were so clearly expecting, but even the half billion dollar mark the two preceding films cleared with ease (even in current dollars, never mind real terms), with the underperformance at home more than matched by what was seen internationally (the principal reason for the box office shortfall). It would seem complacent to think this means nothing for Guardians--the more in as it is just not clear that audiences are terribly excited about this one, whether one goes by "initial pre-sales . . . currently trending below all post-Endgame releases other than Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," or the "social media impact" of pre-release marketing.

The result is that, while I do not rule out the movie's delivering Marvel's first billion dollar take since Spider-Man: No Way Home, I would not be shocked if Guardians was the lowest-grossing film in the Guardians trilogy, especially overseas--or even if it fell a similar way from a similar height. Were it to see proportional erosion of its domestic gross as Ant-Man 3 it would finish up with $400 million, while its international gross falling in the same fashion as it did in the case of Ant-Man 3 would leave it with perhaps $300 million more internationally, making for a $700 million take--a figure the easier to picture because it would put its gross roughly on a level with those of Thor 4 and Black Panther 2, likewise movies that would be considered colossal hits by any standard but at best underwhelming given the expectations associated with their budgets and the Marvel brand. Moreover, some are offering more pessimistic estimates, with the $400 million I suggest as Guardians' domestic gross here already the lowest real-terms take for the Guardians movie (about 5 percent down from the first movie's gross, and almost 15 percent down from the second movie's) actually the high end of the range anticipated by Boxoffice Pro. The lower end of their range has it failing to make the $300 million mark domestically--while one could expect the international gross to likewise suffer in such a scenario, leaving the movie with a good deal less than $700 million.

Should this come to pass this would spell real trouble for Marvel, not only with another high-cost disappointment, but what this means in a year in which Guardians was the studio's best chance to revive confidence in what seems ever more a formerly mighty brand in decline.

Could Captain Marvel 2 be the Marvel Cinematic Universe's The Flash?

In the last several franchise sequel-packed, and flop-packed, years we have time and again seen mighty movie franchises put out a very big movie with very high expectations that performs disastrously. Thus did it go with the Star Wars franchise with the summer of 2018's Solo--the flopping of which stopped Disney's Star Wars movie machine cold, not a single new Star Wars movie released since but the conclusion to the new trilogy, and likely none appearing until 2025, all as Kathleen Kennedy speaks of shifting Star Wars over from a Marvel Cinematic Universe-style machine to a far lower rate James Bond-type machine (interestingly, as the Bond movie production rate falls to unprecedented lows) in a confession of the old vision's failure. Subsequently that other great George Lucas-created franchise, Indiana Jones, has come to an ignominious end (for now) with Dial of Destiny (unhappily realizing my anticipation of its being that series' own Solo). And if it the DC Extended Universe had already had enough (lesser) disappointments that a highly touted reboot had already been loudly announced, and talked up by les claqueurs, The Flash may be said to have been an equivalent catastrophe.

The result is that I find myself wondering--could Captain Marvel 2 (aka The Marvels) be to the Marvel Cinematic Universe what Solo was to Star Wars, what Indiana Jones 5 was to that series, what The Flash has been to the DCEU? Compared with when I made my prediction about The Marvels four months ago, at the beginning rather than the end of the franchise flop-packed summer of 2023, I see even less reason than before for optimism about the performance of superhero sequels like this one, whether from the DCEU, Marvel or anywhere else. Yet the fact remains that my estimate for The Marvels was already fairly low to begin with--premised on what the Black Panther franchise suffered in its theatrical revenues from the first to the second film, a drop of perhaps half in the "real" worldwide box office gross not inconceivable, leaving it with $600-$700 million collected.

Since that time I have seen no reason to think the film will do much better--while certain of the disadvantages it is likely to have are clearer. The film's shift in tone to something goofier than what its predecessors offered may not go over well with audiences (it is the kind of thing that tends to bespeak a run-down series, and very likely did not help Thor 4), while the crossover element can be awkward for people who did not see (or saw but did not like) the associated series--and this all counting the more at a time when viewers are less enthusiastic than before about moviegoing, more fickle in regard to movies that just a short time ago were nearly sure-fire "events." The result is that I do think a Solo/Indiana Jones 5/The Flash-style collapse (the movie's doing less than the $600-$700 million I anticipated, the movie maybe doing just half that business) is not wildly implausible--though of course we will know more in a few weeks, when the box office tracking starts to come in.

For an updated view of the issue, see the author's latest on Captain Marvel 2's prospects.

If the Cinematic Blockbuster Goes, Then What?

For decades now film--especially to the extent that we identify film specifically with what people see in a theater--has seemed to be ever-more dominated by the cinematic "blockbuster" spectacles of essentially one of two types: either "family"-oriented animated features tending toward comedy, and especially musical comedy; or action-adventure that has tended to be science-fiction or fantasy-themed, exemplified by the superhero movie. If anything, the pandemic has sharpened the tendency in this direction.

Of course, that raises the question of what will happen if these blockbuster genres go the way of, for instance, the "serious drama" or the romantic comedy--a prospect that may not be far from implausible. After all, those narratively limited forms of filmmaking are fairly well-won now, while the particular franchises that Hollywood so favors are ever more exhausted (witness Disney's troubles with Star Wars and Marvel, and, in the wake of Warner Bros. failures with the DC Universe, the desperation surrounding the talk of "James Gunn to the rescue!"). Meanwhile the big studios that finance such projects are in a financially battered state (with things perhaps getting worse before they get better, assuming they ever do get better). Between falling returns and the shakiness of the investors' portfolios, something could give, with this including the readiness to put up $300 million or more for the production, promotion and distribution of a big movie.

In such an eventuality the most obvious outcome would, in spite of the desire of the film studios to double down on theaters (and the income from $20 a ticket sales), seem to me to be the continued decline of the theaters--with such venues becoming less numerous, and, to go by what we are hearing of their recent business practice in these very lean years for them (in 2022 the box office gross, if recovering, was, even after Top Gun 2, Marvel's diminished but still not insignificant earnings from its movies, and the release of Avatar 2, still just half what it had been pre-pandemic), becoming more and more "special events" venues or general entertainment centers than houses principally oriented to screening new releases for a steady flow of filmgoers.* Meanwhile, with theatrical income ever less to be relied upon--and theatrical release and the publicity it justifies financially less reliable as a way of competing in the "attention economy"--one could expect the downward pressure on production budgets seen in non-blockbusters these days to continue. Just what that will mean for the content of film, however, will depend on the progress of cinematic technology--and perhaps in particular the possibility of making a TV show look like an "A" picture. The more enthusiastic assessments of the small-screen Star Wars incarnations of recent years generally credit those series' with delivering that, and ultimately it may be here that action-adventure of that type will live on; while if seemingly a more remote prospect the quality of animation on the small screen may begin to approximate that on the large.

* Together Dr. Strange 2, Thor 4 and Black Panther 2 made $1.2 billion in North America--perhaps not all that had been hoped for, but far from trivial, and indeed the kind of money that for most of 2020 and 2021 producers could only fantasize about (as when together Black Widow, The Eternals and Shangi-Chi, coming out in the five month July-November 2021 period, failed to crack $600 million between the three of them). And of course, 2022 also saw Marvel take in another $200 million via Spider-Man's ticket sales from New Year's Day on.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3: How Did the Movie Do in its Second Weekend? (Testing the Predictions)

Last week Guardians of the Galaxy 3 made its debut at the box office. Even after a slight upward revision it was a weak gross compared with preceding entries in the series ($118 million, versus the $147 million with which its predecessor debuted, and the $180 million it would equal in 2023 dollars). Indeed, not much higher than what Ant-Man 3 made in its opening weekend ($106 million over the equivalent three-day period, as part of a four day weekend that saw it take in $120 million), the precedent of Ant-Man 3, and the preceding two Marvel movies (Thor 4 and Black Panther 2), suggested not only a disappointing opening weekend, but weak legs--with the second weekend seeing a gross some 67-70 percent down from that of the first. Meanwhile even a better hold (which Boxoffice Pro predicted) seemed unlikely to be much better than what the earlier, initially more warmly received, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 did (a 56 percent or so drop). Taking these two possibilities as establishing the range, and extrapolating from the opening weekend numbers on those terms, it seemed to me the second weekend would see a gross of $35-$50 million, with my expectation, given how things have been going for Marvel, inclining toward the low end of the range (under $40 million).

Looking at the movie's grosses on the days of the following week I found myself starting to rethink that, the movie holding up rather better than Ant-Man 3 in the post-Sunday period, and giving the impression that it would extend its lead. (After its first four days Guardians of the Galaxy was running 6 percent ahead of Ant-Man 3--with $127 million to $120 million. But after seven days its gross was running almost 13 percent ahead, with $152 million banked to its $135 million.) But I let my prediction stand--and still thought that if the movie now looked likely to make over $40 million it would not shift the result upward very much, never mind shift the range.

Instead what happened is that the drop (better than that for any of the other eleven Marvel Cinematic Universe movie (MCU) released since the pandemic) was under 50 percent as it made not forty, not fifty, but sixty million.

It seems that Star-Lord and company, if starting out with what looked like a bust (a third down from what Guardians of the Galaxy 2 scored in the exact same time frame, in real terms), has been partly compensated by a better than expected week after. Much will depend on whether this pattern continues. But at this stage of things the worst-case scenario I had in mind (an Ant-Man 3-like collapse after the first weekend, leaving the movie with $240 million or so banked stateside) no longer seems worth considering. Indeed, even if the movie were after this point to follow Ant-Man 3's pattern of rapid decay (which is to say, that it had 78 percent of its gross banked in the first ten days, with just that last little bit left to go) the movie would end up with something on the order of $270 million. And it would not take very much better for it to cross the $300 million line.

The result is that, as earlier anticipated by most analysts, $300-$400 million is the range in which the film is likely to finish domestically. For the time being, however, I still anticipate that the gross will be closer to the low end of the range. (Guardians of the Galaxy 2 made 64 percent of its money in its first ten days. The same would still give Guardians 3 $330 million.)

Meanwhile the overseas hold has been similarly decent--the film collecting a respectable $92 million abroad, bringing the global total for the first ten days to $528 million. Implying a rough 40/60 split between the domestic and foreign earnings, this more or less continues the pattern from last week, which suggested (in the reverse of what happened with Ant-Man 3) that the movie's overseas earnings were holding up better than its domestic earnings relative to its predecessor. Assuming that this remains the case, with a Guardians gross in the $300-$350 million range domestically, one would end up with $750-$875 million collected worldwide.

The low end of the range is not much better than the estimates made in line with the real terms decline of Marvel's movies (I estimated $700-$750 million in the weeks leading up to the movie's release). Meanwhile the high end of the range--if a good deal better than the pessimistic speculations we saw as the opening weekend expectations plummeted, and the first weekend did indeed prove a disappointment--does not change the fundamental situation. Even the $875 million still leaves the movie not only not the "big finish" some said it would be, but the lowest performer in the trilogy by a good way when we adjust for inflation, and by the same token, well short of that billion in current dollars mark of which so much is made. All of this would seem to affirm the view of the MCU as a franchise in decline--if a slower, less catastrophic decline than some had it (or hoped).

How Will Captain Marvel 2 Do? A Box Office Prediction for The Marvels

Recently writing about the pattern of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) grosses from Thor 4 forward I found myself hitting on the subject not just of what it portended for Guardians of the Galaxy 3, but also The Marvels, still half a year away--enough so that it seemed worth giving that its own post.

Ant-Man 3 was the precedent that seemed to me most relevant to Guardians of the Galaxy 3, given that it is likewise a "lesser" Marvel franchise coming out not quite three months after the other movie, with the estimates for its opening weekend domestic gross strongly suggesting a similar course (a rough one-third drop in inflation-adjusted, real terms from what the last film made leaving it with an approximately $700 million gross).

By contrast Black Panther 2 seemed a more relevant parallel for The Marvels, in part because of the parallels between the preceding films. Captain Marvel, like Black Panther, was the first film in a new series; put out during Marvel's Phase Three peak (2018-2019); released in the early part of the year (March 8, as against February 16, a mere three weeks off); touted as an event (indeed, a milestone!) because of its protagonist's ethnicity or gender; and similarly made over a billion dollars at the box office (back when a dollar was officially worth a good deal more than it is today).*

Fast-forward to today, and one notes that Black Panther 2 was put out amid declining excitement about the MCU in the wake of Phase Four's underperformance; put out in November; and simply did not have the cachet of the first because a sequel to a movie supposedly important as a "first" simply could not be an event in the same way. (One might add that in becoming "female-led" Black Panther 2 became in yet another way even more like the upcoming Captain Marvel 2.)

Black Panther 2 ended up making half of what Black Panther did. It does not seem unreasonable to anticipate Captain Marvel 2 doing the same on the basis of those parallels, which would mean a gross of some $600-$700 million.

Moreover, it should be noted that Captain Marvel 2 has liabilities Black Panther 2 (even with the loss of a well-liked star) did not.

There is the divided reaction to the first Captain Marvel film.

There is the tie-in with a Disney streaming show that not everyone Marvel Studios must be hoping will come see the film will have watched (which hurt Dr. Strange 2).

And there is arguably greater doubt about the movie--with the MCU racking up further underperformances (Black Panther 2 included in the view of those disposed to see it as such, and the unquestioned disappointment of Ant-Man 3, while Guardians of the Galaxy may go the same way), and the decision to bump the release of The Marvels from July to November not helping.

The result is that The Marvels may suffer an even steeper drop than Black Panther 2 did, possibly slipping below the $600 million mark to rival Ant-Man 3 in its earnings.

For the time being we have not heard much about what the movie ultimately cost, only partial numbers released to date, while one can only wonder as to just how big and expensive the post-production job that prompted the more than three months' delay is. But it is worth recalling that the original Captain Marvel saw Disney-Marvel spend over $450 million on the film (with $175 million just the net production cost). Sequels are rarely cheaper to make than the original, while the extended post-production, and the possibility of a more than usually aggressive promotional push to help prop up the good Marvel name(s) in which Disney has so much invested, would make a still heavier outlay plausible. Should the movie after all that end up with $600 million, or even less, from the theatrical run, its profits will not just be a long way from the $400 million+ the studio may have made from the first film (and expected of the second!), but the return negative.

Of course, a lot could happen in the six months between now, and when the movie will hit theaters, with The Flash an object lesson in just how much the expectations (or at least, the press' expectations) can change in such a short period. Yet this is the pattern I see as relevant for the time being--while, as we are on the subject of that other movie, it seems to me that people are swinging from one extreme to the other, if not regarding the film's quality, then at least its likely box office. Even a better-than-expected Flash film, and some positive buzz and word-of-mouth, is likely to boost it only so much in a crowded summer. The same would go for Captain Marvel 2, a very great gap existing between the numbers I am talking about here, and the $1.3-$1.4 billion grossed by the original, or even just the billion-dollar mark the MCU has found ever more elusive in even this inflationary era.

* Arguably the view of Black Panther as a "milestone" was more important in the U.S. than elsewhere. It actually ended up the highest-grossing movie of the year in North America in 2018, outdoing even Avengers: Infinity War with its $700 million domestic gross ($800 million+ today), but performed more like other Marvel movies abroad (pulling in just 48 percent of its take internationally). Still, the first Black Panther's international gross was markedly greater than the sequel's, some $647 million ($750 million in 2022 terms) to Black Panther 2's $405 million.

For an updated view of the issue, see the author's latest on Captain Marvel 2's prospects.

The Marvels' Trailer: A Reaction

The trailer for The Marvels has me anticipating a movie that places the accent on goofy comedy.

Think Thor 4.

Except, to go by the visuals, a lot cheaper looking.

Granted, we have heard a lot about Marvel taking the time to get the CGI right on this one after the criticism of Ant-Man 3, but all the same one might have hoped for somewhat more dazzle--at least, in comparison with the contemporaneous trailer for the originally straight-to-streaming Blue Beetle.

My gut reaction: what it shows of the movie makes me more, not less, confident of my expectation of a significant drop in gross from the 2019 Captain Marvel (while, as it happens, my expectations for Blue Beetle moved up at least a couple of notches on the basis of its flashy, action-packed trailer).

Black Panther 2's Second Weekend: A Note

Here's the post I wrote after Black Panther 2's second weekend. I didn't get it posted in time, but thought it best to put it up here unamended, even if it is already a bit dated with the third weekend (the topic of an upcoming post) now behind us.

Black Panther 2 has taken in some $67 million in its second weekend--a 63 percent drop from its debut of a week before. This is, of course, no disaster for a highly anticipated and therefore front-loaded sequel coming off of an opening boosted by a holiday weekend release, which, seeing the film take in $181 million, was quite healthy.

But it's also not evidence of exceptional legs, either, a lack which matters the more because the big $180 million weekend was not all that was hoped for (actually on the low end of expectations), with this reflected in the film's take to date--$288 million in tickets sold in North America alone.

Compare that to the $403 million the original banked in 2018 in the same time frame. Given that Black Panther at that point had taken in about 58 percent of its total, the implication is that Black Panther 2, following the same trajectory, could yet take in $500 million. But that would be well short of the $700 million the original Black Panther took in (let alone the $820-$860 million with which we could credit it, should we adjust the numbers for inflation), while it stands to reason that, as sequels tend to do, the film will fade faster.

Again, I find myself thinking of the trajectory of Thor 4, which banked about two-thirds of its money in its first ten days ($233 million of its eventual $343 million take). If Black Panther 2 goes the same route that would mean the movie's winding up with that $430 million previously suggested as the low end of the range.

Assuming that $430-$500 million range the movie's even breaking the billion-dollar barrier globally seems in doubt now, and again the gross of $800 million or less still a plausible estimate of the low end of the range for the final take. Still making for a great hit by almost any other standard, where this franchise is considered it would, as about half what the original made in "real," inflation-adjusted terms ($1.4 billion in 2018 dollars, $1.6-1.7 billion in 2022 dollars), be something less than that. Indeed, in going by the rule of thumb that production budgets are matched by marketing budgets, and studios keep 40-50 percent of the take (while the contribution of subsidies and other supports is unknown), anything short of $1.2 billion is suspect as making for less than that profit on the basis of first-run release ticket sales on which producers bank.

All that being the case the executives, going by the usual calculus, would not rush to green-light another $250 million production under the Black Panther banner.

Still, the Marvel Cinematic Universe means that the executives will not abide by that usual calculus. A $250 million budget does leave some room to make a still-big movie with a smaller budget the next time around, while cross-overs and the like can easily tie up the next trip to Wakanda with other characters and plots for the sake of propping up the next release. The result is that even the underperforming Black Panther 2 described here may yet be followed up by a Black Panther 3 in some form, and sooner rather than later.

Can the Marvel Cinematic Universe Make a Comeback?

Back in the 2010s the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) went from strength to strength at the box office, especially in its 2012-2019 second and third phases, with Avengers: Endgame capping a historic commercial success.

However, as with so much else in the world the period since the pandemic has been unkind to it--the movie industry generally taking a brutal beating, one whose effects have persisted even as audiences for the most part resumed their theatergoing, with the MCU suffering along with the rest. Much of the MCU's trouble has been a matter of a more closed Chinese market (this was the biggest factor in the trouble Ant-Man 3 had), but it has had its share of woes even in its home North American market, where Thor 4, Black Panther 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 all performed below what might have been hoped for given their predecessors' earnings--while the current expectations regarding Captain Marvel 2 look a lot like what happened with The Flash, implying that worse, much worse, may be in store not just for that movie but the several others behind it in the pipeline, and the Marvel brand as a whole.

Of course, franchises do make comebacks. In its long history the James Bond franchise did so more than once--the franchise most notably recovering from its '80s-era decline with Goldeneye and the subsequent films of the Pierce Brosnan era. Still, the Brosnan period was only a period of relative success, falling well short of the franchise's '60s-era heyday, and could not have given the very different market. (Back in the '60s Bond had no competitors in the high-concept action-adventure franchise market. By contrast the field was pretty crowded by the '90s.) The result is that any recovery for the MCU is likely to be only relative, the kind of success the franchise saw in 2018-2019 (with Black Panther and Captain Marvel, and the two-part Avengers event, and Spider-Man and Ant-Man too, selling $9 billion in tickets in a mere year and a half) is simply not a reasonable expectation for any franchise's "business as usual" for very long.*

Moreover, even relative recovery can seem a longshot given, regardless of what Marvel does with its movies, the kind of movie Marvel makes and can be expected to go on making in any conceivable scenario--the high-concept action-adventure blockbuster franchise movie, which, as the troubles of the James Bond series that invented the form, and the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series' that went such a long way to making them a Hollywood staple, and the DCEU that has been Marvel's closest thing to a rival, and this summer's Fast and Furious and Transformers and Mission: Impossible movies all show, is looking very shopworn these days in the 2020s. Indeed, investing in superhero movies these days is starting to look like investing in big, splashy historical epics and musicals in the late 1960s--sticking to an ever-more costly and increasingly losing old game when the studios would be doing better to look to new ideas to be the basis of new successes.

* Of course, these have been inflationary years, and $9 billion in 2018-2019 works out to more like $11 billion today.

Hollywood and the East Asian Box Office, 2013

The top movie at the Japanese box office this year was the final Hayao Miyazaki movie, The Wind Rises.

Of the top ten, eight were Japanese productions, with just two American imports making the list--Disney's Monsters' University at #2, Ted at #4. And the top twenty included only four more American films--Wreck-It Ralph at #13, Gravity #17, Iron Man 3 #18, Despicable Me 2 #19.

In short, the trends of the past decade have continued, with Hollywood doing less business in Japan, and its list of successes more eclectic.1 The action and science fiction spectacles that normally top the American and world box offices in particular do less well here than elsewhere.2

As Japan has gone, so have other East Asian countries. Where seven of the top ten movies in South Korea in 2007 were American releases (and ten of the top twenty), in 2013 Hollywood accounted for just one of the top ten earners, Iron Man 3, which made only the third spot; and only four American films appeared among the top twenty (the other big imports being World War Z, Gravity and Thor: The Dark World).3

This pattern was evident in China as well. Much as the entertainment press trumpets every release in that market, the fact remains that where in 2007 six of the top ten movies there were American imports, this could be said of only two of the top ten in 2013 (Iron Man 3 and Pacific Rim), with the rest all Chinese productions, including the movie that was far and away the biggest hit, Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, which took in $196 million.4

Simply put, China has now developed the kind of domestic market that can support (relatively) big-budget, high-concept films like Journey, which means that lucrative as the Chinese market can be, it is also much more competitive. In fairness, Iron Man 3 and Pacific Rim by themselves earned more than those six biggest American movies of 2007 combined--but their take still represented a smaller slice of a pie. It has just been the case that that pie was growing very fast, much faster than Hollywood's share of it has fallen. That seems unlikely to go on forever, with China's rate of economic growth slowing, while Chinese film production catches up to the foreign competition in resources and versatility. This suggests that Hollywood's fortunes in China will, over the longer run (and perhaps not even the very long run) suffer as they did in Japan and Korea, boding poorly for its current heavy reliance on a rising stream of revenue from this part of the world.5

1. Together the two American films in the top ten this past year took in $134 million; the five films in the top twenty, $208 million. By contrast, nine of the top ten movies in 2002 were American (fully accounting for the top six spots, one might add), while of the top twenty, sixteen were American. The highest-earning film that year, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, took in $142 million all by itself, the top five just under $430 million. The American movies in the top ten collectively made $570 million, those in the top twenty a total of $706 million. This works out to Hollywood making just a fraction of what it formerly did in this hugely important market, even without the adjustment of the figures for inflation, which would leave the drop in its earnings looking considerably sharper than that.
2. One minor bright spot in 2013: A Good Day to Die Hard took the #22 spot (compared with the #52 position in the United States). Still, this last installment in the series hardly set the Japanese box office on fire, taking in just $22 million--as compared with $32 million for Live Free or Die Hard, and an astonishing $81 million for Die Hard With a Vengeance way back in 1995 ($123 million in today's terms, more than any movie made in Japan since 2011).
3. The six American movies that made the top ten in South Korea back in 2007 took in over $200 million, more than three times as much as the $65 million Iron Man 3 made there last year.
4. It should be noted that the performance does not look quite as bad if one looks at the top twenty rather than the top ten, eleven of the top twenty earners in Chinese theaters being American in 2013. Still, the fact that so many of the biggest American hits were crowded out of the top slots cannot be ignored.
5. The six biggest American films in the Chinese market in 2007 accounted for about $112 million of the $199 million grossed by that year's top ten--about 56 percent of the total. By contrast, Iron Man 3 and Pacific Rim earned $224 million out of some $1.081 billion earned by the top ten moneymakers, slightly less than 21 percent, rather a sharp drop in their share. The drop is less steep when one looks at the top twenty, but still quite clear, American film's share of their gross falling from 54 to 46 percent of the total.

Captain Marvel 2's Prospects: Revisiting the Box Office Prediction

The new trailer for The Marvels is out.

My thoughts: in contrast with the prior trailer, which frankly made the movie look a bit cheap, and may have overemphasized the element of goofy comedy, the new one makes The Marvels at least look the part of a big-budget CGI-packed Marvel Cinematic Universe adventure.

Of course, I had thought this would probably happen soon enough (especially given the talk of the film's release's delay having had to do at least in part with the desire to get the FX right), so this does not change things much from what I expected back in early May.

Rather what has changed is my image of the American box office's condition (and the world's as well). Late last year my thought was that 2023 would see the box office more or less return to its pre-pandemic norm, and this was confirmed by the first four months of the year as the box office take improved significantly over the same period back in 2022. However, instead of this summer continuing that improvement the summer of 2023's first two months actually saw a drop compared with that of 2022, so that the box office has been moving further away from the pre-pandemic norm rather than closing the gap with it.

Putting it simply, this summer has indeed been crowded with tentpoles--but audiences have rejected them, with this year's installments in the biggest franchises underperforming again and again (Fast and Furious, Transformers, even Indiana Jones), with superhero films not exempt (The Flash). Meanwhile salvation has not been forthcoming from the international markets (with China, in particular, ever less receptive to Hollywood's products).

Of course, there is a counter-argument in Captain Marvel 2's case. Admittedly Marvel has not escaped the more general trend toward lower grosses by any means, with Thor 4, Black Panther 2 and especially Ant-Man 3 doing much less well than their predecessors. Still, if Phase Four was disappointing (even more so than was publicly known, it seemed, given the recent revelations about how Dr. Strange 2 really did), only Ant-Man 3 looks like a genuine flop, with this substantially a matter of its performance in China, while Guardians of the Galaxy 3, if not wholly bucking the trend, is still a hit by just about any standard by Marvel's (and indeed, the second-biggest hit of the year as of July, after only The Super Mario Bros. Movie).* This suggests that Marvel, if looking ever further away from its Phase Three peak, is at least a more robust contender than the competition (which has done a lot worse), and should not be counted out too hastily. Indeed, should Captain Marvel 2 suffer only a Guardians of the Galaxy 3-like drop in its theatrical gross when compared with its predecessor it would still be a $1 billion hit--perhaps the only such non-animated film to achieve that distinction this year.**

Still, it is worth noting that Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was saved by decent legs after a disappointing opening that raised the specter of its being another Ant-Man 3. This suggests that people's enthusiasm had been dimmed, while the film's good legs were probably at least in part a matter of surprisingly slight competition as all those other big summer movies failed to interest viewers, and they still left Guardians of the Galaxy 3 the weakest performer by a good way in a trilogy that was a long way from being Marvel's strongest performer. The result is that lot would have to go Captain Marvel 2's way for the film to be as fortunate in its commercial release--the more in as the film confronts so many headwinds. The result is that I am sticking with my expectation of $700 million as high as it is likely to go--while, as with Shazam 2, The Flash and Indiana Jones (and the upcoming Aquaman 2) I find myself increasingly wondering about the possibility of collapse.

* Adjusting mid-2017 (i.e. May 2017) prices for those of mid-2023 (May 2023) the gross of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 comes to about $1.07 billion, versus the $850 million at which Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is topping out, leaving it a fifth down in real terms.
** Adjusting March 2019 prices for mid-2023 turns Captain Marvel's $1.1 billion gross into one of $1.35 billion today--20 percent off of which would still leave the movie with $1.08 billion.