[#item_full_content] [[{“value”:”The Gist
“Avengers: Doomsday” and “Dune: Part Three” are both still scheduled for the same day. Should Disney be worried?
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” broke trailer viewing records apparently. So what?
“Wonder Man” was (surprisingly) renewed, and a check-in on Marvel’s comic sales.
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“Dunesday” is coming. At least for now.
At the moment, both “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Dune: Part Three” are releasing on the same day on December 18 — referred to as Dunesday by fans and even Robert Downey Jr. They show no signs yet of backing off of those plans, with Warner Bros. dropping a trailer for the latter last week that includes the date.
Should Disney and Marvel be be worried? Depending on your online circles, that might be the consensus. “Dune: Part Three” will apparently wipe away “Doomsday” at the box office. That’s probably just my algorithm full of cinephiles; despite the post-pandemic decline of superhero movies at the box office, I don’t actually think there’s any evidence that “Doomsday” won’t be one of the biggest movies of the year. The core “Avengers” franchise is still regarded with fanfare beyond the MCU; it was Gen Alpha’s sixth favorite franchise in an NRG story last year, one of just four superhero franchises (which also included Spider-Man, Spider-Verse, and Batman — so really three if you combined the Spiders).
But it is telling that we’re even having this conversation; a decade ago, WB would have never thought to pit a movie against any Marvel movie, let alone an Avengers. Now, whether it be confidence or hope that it can ride a “Barbenheimer”-like wave, “Dune: Part Three” will go up against “Avengers: Doomsday.” It comes the year after WB finally topped Marvel at the box office with a DC movie, “Superman.” A year in which none of the three MCU movies released cracked $600 million.
This year will be different, though, and it’s not just because of “Doomsday.” “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” hits theaters this summer, and might give “Doomsday” a run for its money. Spider-Man seems to be the one superhero — aside from Batman, but even more so — that can currently carry a movie on his own to insane box office numbers. Last week, Sony dropped the first trailer for the movie, and it has apparently become the first movie trailer ever to reach 1 billion views. Whatever that means.
I find that number to be pretty meaningless, but I’ve already seen a lot of hardcore fans point to it as a sign that “superhero fatigue” isn’t real. Whatever you want to call it, the decline of superhero movies is measurable; analyst David A Gross estimated the genre made $2 billion last year, compared to $7 billion in 2018. Much of that has to do with less movies being released, but the three MCU movies released last year made a combined $1.3 billion, for an average of just over $430 million. Those are phase one numbers. And sure, studios would kill for some of their tentpole IP to reach those figures these days, but it still leaves a huge gap in the market.
Two things can be true: Superhero movies are not the center of the movie culture anymore and they can still be hugely successful under the right circumstances, including and especially MCU event movies like “Brand New Day” and “Doomsday.”
Okay, that’s the movie side. Another interesting thing happened with Marvel recently, as they renewed “Wonder Man” for a second season. This surprised me, given the show was received warmly by critics and viewers (including me) but didn’t pop in ratings. In its first week, it was watched for 618 million minutes in the US, according to Nielsen, which would equate to less than 3 million viewers, roughly (it’s an imperfect science, dividing the minutes viewed by the combined run time. But it’s the best we’ve got). Hit shows on other platforms that don’t have Marvel attached to their name, like Amazon’s “Fallout,” get triple those numbers.
So what is Marvel’s metric for success when it comes to TV now? Is it really focusing on quality over quantity? “Daredevil: Born Again” season two premieres this week, so maybe that will shed some more light on the question.
Of course, Marvel isn’t just movies and TV. I’ve written before about the decline in its comics output, if not in sales then in quality, as it cancels series quickly and seems to have no long-term strategy beyond just timing books with movie releases. Well, maybe that’s catching up with Marvel’s publishing side. In Q4 2025, DC’s efforts paid off and it overtook Marvel in sales in comic shops for the quarter. And for the full year, it sold 40 of the top 100 comic issues by units sold. Marvel had eight of the top 100, and one of those was the Deadpool/Batman crossover.
What I’m into this week
I’m reading the 1989 sci-fi novel “Hyperion” by Dan Simmons, who recently passed away. Fuck, this is good!
“Project Hail Mary” is every bit as fun as the hype suggests. I did not read that book, so I was delighted by the “twist.”
Inspired by the above, I finally checked out 2016’s “The Nice Guys,” also starring Ryan Gosling. It went under the radar when it was first released, but it’s one of the funniest movies of the century.
Beyond the Traverse
🤖 Disney is pulling out of its deal with OpenAI after the company said it would shut down the Sora app.
Here’s my previous piece on the deal and what it meant.
⭐️ Paramount+ is canceling “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” after two seasons.
🗡️ Netflix’s “Assassin’s Creed” series will be set in ancient Rome in the year 64 AD.
The “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” reboot is not moving forward at Hulu.
The Traverse is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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