Whatever your feelings about the current creative state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s hard to deny that the franchise’s financial issues are becoming more obvious by the week. That’s come into especially tight focus this week, with the release of Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels, which just posted the second-worst opening day in the MCU’s history—and is on track to potentially have the worst domestic opening of the entire 33-movie series, total.
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This is per Variety, which reports that DaCosta’s film—which brings together Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau, and Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan for a cosmic-level team-up—brought in just $21.5 million on Thursday and Friday, just barely beating out the 2008 Incredible Hulk movie, the record-holder for worst Marvel opening day ever. If the film doesn’t pick up the pace on Saturday and Sunday, it’s in serious danger of slipping behind both Hulk and the original Ant-Man (which both brought in a bit more than $55 million at the domestic box office) to have the worst opening weekend in the MCU, period.
This is a pretty serious “from bad to worse” situation for the studio, from a couple of different angles. For one thing, while 2023's two previous Marvel movies—Ant-Man And The Wasp: QuantumaniaGuardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3—weren’t exactly world-beaters when it came to their returns, they did at least open at more than $100 million in the domestic markets. Meanwhile, the original Captain Marvel (one of like three different things The Marvels operates as a sequel to) opened way better, at $150 million, while costing $60 million less to make than The Marvels.
International numbers haven’t come in yet for the movie, although they’re expected to be at least a bit rosier than the U.S. take. None of which is going to stop analysts from tearing this situation apart; if Marvel has been trying to stave off all that “Marvel fatigue” talk by supposedly cutting back on TV production (and continuing to be a big tease about the last few major comic book brands it hasn’t tapped yet), this probably isn’t going to help.