If Doomsday isn’t a massive hit (1.5 billion+), the MCU is basically done.
Curious to see if others agree. Obviously if it flops, it’s over, but I’d say it needs to be huge for the future of the MCU to have any real hope. If it’s not, I just can’t see Disney spending the money to continue making marvel films outside of Spider-Man, X-Men, etc… if an Avengers movie is only mildly successful, I just don’t see anything outside of their biggest draws turning a significant profit.
I personally don’t feel very confident. I doubt doomsday does those numbers and frankly I’m not so sure it breaks a billion. Would’ve seemed unthinkable just six years ago, but so would the idea of marvel releasing multiple flops (one of them being the Fantastic 4) within a few years.
I personally don’t feel very confident. I doubt doomsday does those numbers and frankly I’m not so sure it breaks a billion. Would’ve seemed unthinkable just six years ago, but so would the idea of marvel releasing multiple flops (one of them being the Fantastic 4) within a few years.
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I heard it in regards to Captain Ametica: TFA, Avengers, Guardians, Age of Ultron, Civil War, Infinity War, Endgame.
If the MCU isn't doing well, we'll just get fewer projects with shorter run times and smaller budgets. Thats it. But at this point, the train itself will just keep chugging along.
I don’t think it’ll disappear entirely, and the shared universe/multiverse concept is here to stay for large franchise films in general. But the number of marvel feature films would drastically decrease, I think. Like one every couple of years, maybe. Outside of characters like spider-man, the MCU kind of depends on itself to justify a lot of the movies. If there was not an overarching plot drawing me in, I would have never gone to see films starring characters I had never heard of like Ant-Man and Captain Marvel.
And just because a movie doesn't make $1B doesn't mean it was a flop. People need to understand movies have changed since COVID. The box office seems to no longer be the main indicator of success with a movie. Marvel is highly merchandisable and will this contributes significantly to their bottom line.
People just don’t Go to the Cinema that much Like before
The Mega Corporation will still live After Even if it fails
In 2019, 9 movies did it but on average it was 4-5 movies a year in the few years before 2020.
2. Lilo And stich was a Fluke and we don't talk about it lol.
3. Also we are screwed as a collective fanbase if we are now thinking that MINECRAFT AND LILO AND STICH are considered to be "GOOD MOVIES"
Doomsday will definitely make money, but the avengers films are the biggest/most profitable films in the franchise. If it fails to make a billion that bodes very poorly for future, non team-up films.
The merchandising profits generated by the brand are massive, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re not going to continue making films if they stop making money on them.
A great example was Transformers One which flopped (based on Hasbro's actions afterwards) with $130M and a budget of $75M. $40M of that was voice actors salaries. If they hired talented voice actors instead of 'stars' then the budget would have been halved and at $130M this movie would have made a nice profit.
I honestly have no idea how they spent $175M to make Thunderbolts. This could have easily been a $100M movie considering the minimal number of locations, sets and fights which needed special effects.
We don't know how much the budget actually is. Most sites report a budget but unless it's formally reported somewhere, we don't know.
We don't know how much they spent on marketing.
The split of revenue changes in the US from week to week, cinema chain to cinema chain and internationally. We don't have much of that information.
We don't know how much money the movie makes from home video sales, streaming rights, merchandise licensing etc.
It's like claiming a cafe is failing because coffee sales drop without considering how many muffins they sell.
Most of the rest of the stuff is in their financial reports.
And their financial reports typically don't break down movie by movie.
That's just social media mythology. The main indicator of success is the box office. People don't buy merchandise for movies they didn't watch, and that merchandise actually adds to the loss when a movie does poorly at the box office.
The big-box retailers (Amazon, Walmart, Target) all have contracts that force Disney to rebuy unsold merchandise at a percentage after X days. Then Disney has to pay to have it destroyed.
To sum up, the box office is a direct factor in the marketability of merchandise, and a failed box office is going to produce failed merchandise which will increase the movie's losses.
They obviously got the message that whatever they were doing before wasn’t working (bringing back the Russos and McFeely, giving themselves an extra 6 months to finish the film, putting RDJ and Chris H in the biggest roles). I think they’re really trying to make it something that both longtime fans and the general audience will love.
but anyway heir plan is literally to do x-men and reboot popular characters also regardless of how well it performs.
The Fantastic Four are not famous characters and this year the international box office has been very doubtful
In any case, for the future of Marvel, I expect much lower budgets (100-150). The cinematographic context is in serious crisis.
I think there are several aspects to consider here. The fact I just mentioned, the movie tastes of fans, and the perceived quality of the movie.
The movie industry is struggling with similar problems to those faced by the music industry years ago.
ex. The Marvels or Quantumania
Here's what Q2 earning report had to say:
Theatrical distribution results were comparable to the prior-year quarter, as the carryover performance of first quarter releases, Mufasa: The Lion King and Moana 2, was largely offset by the results of second quarter releases, Snow White and Captain America: Brave New World, including the costs of their initial marketing campaigns.
Moana and Mufasa made banks and made more than enough to offset the losses from Snow White and BNW. That being said, BNW was highlighted as a loss, so we know it flopped because notes to financial statement said so.
And here's Q4:
The decrease in operating results was due to lower theatrical distribution results, partially offset by
a decrease in film cost impairments. The current quarter reflected the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, The Roses and Freakier Friday and the carry-over performance of Lilo & Stitch, while the prior-year quarter included the release of Deadpool & Wolverine and the carry-over performance of Inside Out 2.
Granted, Q4 FY2025 saw Disney in a hole (-$52mm loss) though how much of it is attributed to The Roses (a Searchlight release) is unknown. We know Freakier Friday had more than broken even so whatever is left is attributed to FF.
I am very confident it won't break a billion, right now I'd put it in the 500m-700m range.
The movie's cast list right now is "Remember those characters you wouldn't pay to see the past few years? Here they all are again!". If people weren't willing to pay to see Sam, New Avengers, or Fantastic 4, they aren't going to be willing to pay to see Sam + New Avengers + Fantastic 4.
People here tend to rely too much on the idea of "nostalgia" assuming that people will buy tickets if older actors/actresses are on screen. It did work for Spiderman, but it won't work for X-Men, we've already seen them several times in several different ways.
Feige needed to retool Doomsday to focus on the Infinity Wars characters while trying to find a collection of characters that could carry the franchise forward, but he seems to be doubling down on a dead-end path and I strongly doubt that it's going to get them to a billion or even close to break even.
Stop with the doom-posting\*. Do you not recall how many abject flops the DCEU had, without any of the insane success the MCU had? And even after all that, we're only just *now* getting it restarting. Not even binned, just rebooted. It'd take a lot more than "Doomsday not being a multi-billion dollar movie" for the MCU to be "done".
*\*unless it's just posting about Dr. DOOM, of course.*
Of course, but like a "boy who cried wolf" effect, it loses weight when it keeps happening and leading to nothing.
>and regardless of your predictions for this specific film you can’t really deny that the franchise has been on a decline as of late.
I'd argue significantly *less* of a decline than many like to make out, and even ignoring that, "being on a decline" does not equate to, "this one has to make 1.5 billion or the MCU is over".