The Marvels Box Office Plummets, Breaking Another Unfortunate MCU Record

The new Marvel Cinematic Universe outing The Marvels is continuing to struggle at the box office. The movie, which is a direct sequel to Captain Marvel that teams Brie Larson’s titular hero with Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), previously turned out the lowest opening weekend of the MCU with a $46.1 million debut. It followed that with the steepest week 2 drop of the franchise, plummeting a staggering 78.1%.

Per Deadline, the The Marvels box office is continuing its trend of breaking negative MCU records in week 3. Over Thanksgiving weekend, the movie is estimated to earn a 5-day total of $8.8 million, placing it at No. 6 on the box office chart below Thanksgiving, Trolls Band Together, Wish, Napoleon, and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. This makes it the quickest MCU movie to exit the domestic Top 5, behind The Incredible Hulk, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Captain America: The First Avenger, which each took four weeks to fall from the Top 5.

The Marvels’ release comes at a time when the box office prospects of the MCU are seemingly becoming more inconsistent. For instance, the previous Phase 5 installment, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, performed well, becoming the sixteenth highest-grossing movie in the 33-part cinematic franchise. However, the movie before that was Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which posted the franchise’s worst week 2 drop before The Marvels broke its record.

However, even with that demerit, Quantumania nevertheless took six weeks to drop out of the box office Top 5. While The Marvels‘ three-week descent might not seem like much next to the four-week records set previously, it still suffers in comparison to the MCU at its box office peak. It’s not uncommon for MCU movies to remain at No. 1 for three consecutive weeks and stay in the Top 5 for even longer, with Spider-Man: No Way Home remaining on the chart for 16 weeks, including six nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1.

However, given the fact that the Marvels cast was largely unavailable to promote the movie as its release coincided with the end of the 2023 actors strike, it remains to be seen if the rest of Phase 5 will follow the trend of The Marvels and Quantumania. The next movie on the docket is Deadpool 3, a sequel to the popular X-Men subfranchise that could perform very well. It’s unclear how the follow-up Captain America: Brave New World might perform, but Phase 5 may have kicked off a period of back-and-forth instability rather than an inevitable slide downward.

Source: Deadline

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