It’s pretty wild when you contrast “The Marvels” to literally every single other MCU film that came before it…

Prior to “The Marvels”, a film being a financial flop was never even considered. It was always a matter of “*exactly how well is this going to do*” — certain films did way better than others, but nothing was anything remotely close to unprofitable.

Then we get “The Marvels” which goes on to lose 237 million, which places it number one on the all time box office bomb list for pure money lost, and number two when adjusting for inflation coming in behind John Carter.

Then the next MCU installment is “Deadpool & Wolverine“ which goes on to gross 1.38 billion worldwide.

It truly is an anomaly.

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Commentaires

SDLRob2025-12-04 23:13

That movie was destroyed by the strikes and the way the studios behaved.

Caciulacdlac2025-12-04 23:14

Eternals was a flop and it came out before The Marvels

rara81222025-12-04 23:17

While not a massive flop, Incredible Hulk is often considered a flop as well due to not making double its budget. That one was the MCU’s second ever movie.

GypsyGold2025-12-04 23:17

I forgot that existed. Did it actually lose money?

IceLord862025-12-04 23:20

Eternals made $400M on a $200M+ budget, so yeah it lost money (probably $100M or more).

GypsyGold2025-12-04 23:24

From a pure mathematical standpoint it doubled its budget, but I do get that doesn’t include hidden fees and stuff like marketing

IceLord862025-12-04 23:26

Disney doesn't get all that, only half. Plus the budget doesn't include advertising costs. The accepted break even number is 2.5x the budget, but that $200M is probably considerably higher considering the size of the cast and the super inflated budget numbers that have come out from Disney lately.

whitepangolin2025-12-04 23:20

I think that gets a little bit of like, post-pandemic leniency (NWH was an anomaly) but yeah it didn't do welleither.

balthazar_edison2025-12-04 23:18

OP ant man and the wasp quantumania was definitely a flop. So was eternals.

With Disney premier black widow pulled a tiny profit and so did Shang chi.

Edit: forgot the word quantumania.

GypsyGold2025-12-04 23:18

Did that lose money?

balthazar_edison2025-12-04 23:19

Needed 500 mill to break even and grossed about 475 so yes. Not nearly as much as the marvels.

GypsyGold2025-12-04 23:23

Idk, The Numbers say it had a production budget of 200m, and made 476m

I know marketing and stuff isn’t factored in, but from a pure math standpoint it doubled it’s budget

LADYBIRD_HILL2025-12-04 23:24

Usually marketing is twice a film's budget, especially with the MCU.

GypsyGold2025-12-04 23:25

Well, they can at least play it off on paper and pretend it made money,

balthazar_edison2025-12-04 23:30

A film needs to gross 2.5x its production budget to break even about.

the film had a 200 mill prod budget and about 100 mill on P+A/Marketing.

That’s 300 million to recoup.

The studio gets 60% of domestic ticket sales, 25% of Chinese ticket sales, and about 40% from everywhere else.

The film grossed 214.5 million domestically 39.5 million in China, and 222 million everywhere else in the world.

That means that the studio made 128.7 million domestically 9.875 million from Chinese ticket sales and 88.8 million from the rest of the world. This gives the studio a net revenue of 227.375 million approximately.

Take 227.375 million and subtract the $300 million total investment on the film and that leaves you with a loss of $72.625 million approximately.

*that’s* pure math.

CaptHayfever2025-12-05 00:36

Ant-Man & the Wasp grossed over 3x its budget; that was not a flop.

balthazar_edison2025-12-05 00:40

I mean quantumania. I fixed it.

Wooden-Radish-90082025-12-05 02:32

Pretty sure there was an article that came out that revealed Quantumania actually did make a small profit..

Here it is: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinereid/2024/10/27/how-marvels-latest-ant-man-movie-lost-millions-in-theaters-but-still-made-a-profit/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGMfAZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHfDVx1-ftowVzbFveEQtimHA45lSB5CtlOVgyg74yMqs5W1NzAWt9JkMmg_aem_FGIfeXPUJlQTDBra2k2jrw

balthazar_edison2025-12-05 02:35

I’m just talking about theatrical profit here.

It was a massive failure. Made 150 million less than its predecessor with a higher production budget.

Also im not trusting a Forbes article unless it’s referencing the Hollywood reporter, variety or deadline.

Edit: also this article says the movie made 88k… on a 388 million investment. That’s an ROI of 0.022%. That’s still abysmal.

FatBoyWithTheChain2025-12-04 23:22

It’s not really that wild to me tbh, especially in retrospect.

I think there were a lot of issues present with the MCU at that time (which has been talked about here ad nauseam) that all came to a head with The Marvels, which prompted the underperformance.

leevo2025-12-04 23:23

The marvels was also a victim of timing. Releasing after Love and Thunder and Quantumania, MCU stock was crashing down already. Many fans checked out. Even tho GOTG3 was a success, that was largely due to Gunn.

Then Secret Invasion released right before The Marvels… we know how that turned out.

This was probably the lowest time for all the MCU. It didn’t help that The Marvels had included Fury and people expected SI to somehow be related. Well if SI is the worst MCU product ever, no one’s going to have hype for The Marvels “follow up”.

DP+W is an outlier because they had Hugh back. So that was never going to fail no matter what.

eagc72025-12-05 05:55

Also the other problem is that people were under the belief that you had to be familiar with these characters whose origins were shown in the TV shows, not knowing that the films does catch up somewhat on what are the essentials that you need to know unlike say MoM which expected you to know that Wanda had kids and not tell us how it happened

championwinnerstein2025-12-04 23:25

To be fair the Marvels was pretty junky though. Completely forgettable

StoneGoldX2025-12-04 23:32

Oh, they were very aware for the potential for flop in Phase 1.

FlaymeFenix2025-12-04 23:43

one of the worst villains ever in the MCU, and a general unsubstantiated disdain for brie larson + mcu hype at an all time low

CaptHayfever2025-12-05 00:41

It was released at the tail end of a massive strike that hurt the promotion, followed Quantumania & Secret Invasion, had a years-long misinformation campaign against it, got desynced from all its merch tie-ins, had way too high of a budget, and had some confusing marketing. I love this movie, but there were a **lot** of mistakes made in how it was handled.

Eternals, Incredible Hulk, & Quantumania also lost money, for the record, just not *as much*.

CaptHayfever2025-12-05 00:45

Also, I wonder how long it'll be before I see a familiar pattern of "unavailable" comments in this thread. I guess it depends on if they check their keyword alerts manually or automatically.

Affectionate-Bus9272025-12-05 01:30

[removed]

GypsyGold2025-12-05 04:04

Is this a bot?

sweens902025-12-05 02:45

As many have mentioned, a lot of stuff contributed to its flop.

1) Strikes- We were during a time when actors were not promoting their movies due to the strikes. Advertising is a huge thing and a trillion dollar empire on its own just to get to the product itself. So lack of promoting will always hurt a movie. There is a reason these movies spend millions or close to the same amount of spending on advertisements as they due the movie.

2) The failures that came before it- Thor 4 and Quantum Mania and Secret Wars. These were low points in terms of quality.

3) Captain Marvel 1 while it earned a lot had mixed receptions. So a follow up was always going to be iffy and really needed to knock it out of the park. But with the two above points and combined with some below this obviously did not knock it out.

4) Brie Larson Hate- Brie made comments prior to the first movie that has a brigade of anti-Brie mysoginists who hate a comment she made essentially saying “movie review critics are primarily white men, i am interested in more diverse views as well” but phrased in a definite controversial way (not on purpose) “I don’t need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ It wasn’t made for him.” This drove tons of people to essentially hate her character when there was tons of adoration for her casting prior to this and was even the fan cast favorite.

5) Afraid of homework- Two of the characters (well monica from first but powers from wandavision) came from TV shows. And Fury was in a show just prior. In hindsight not necessary to watch any of them but no one knew that at the time

6) Less quantifiable but not ignorable- Racism/ Misogyny. its the first MCU film revolving around 3 Female protagonist. Two of color.

7) It was an average film. If it was great word of mouth also helps a ton! (Although word of mouth did not help Thunderbolts) The hate is significantly over blown i personally thought its a very fun film and on par with Dead Pool and Wolverine and due to its short length I watch it a lot. Very short. but it is definitely a film you could have wait until its on streaming.

Some of these points alone or a few combined maybe dont tank it but mix them all together and yeah it flopped.

Senshado2025-12-05 04:20

Another failure of The Marvels that's noticeable this year was the musical composition. Carol sang a song in that movie, and there was a big production around her song... But I bet you can't hum one line or repeat any of the words.

Contrast that to this year's big movie, Kpop Demon Hunters. The soundtrack is inescapable across Korea. If The Marvels had a song with even half that quality...

Many The Marvels viewers were turned off by the idea of a singing section- think what could've happened if the singing was actually good.

Anternixii2025-12-05 05:19

I remember being so hyped for a musical segment with how much I heard about it in marketing and press before release

All that hype for what ten seconds. Ridiculous.

Stevenwave2025-12-05 05:48

I didn't mind the singing, dancing, but I thought, shouldn't it have built up to the attack, having the ones who live there dance-fighting them? It could've been really fun and different if we went from "This is pretty cheesy," to "Holy shit they kick ass!" Felt like the film left some unique character just sitting out on the table doing nothing.

Was kinda sad how bad it flopped cause I was surprised by how charming the Ms. Marvel show was, and I was hoping Carol could step up to being a prominent figure. But I doubt she'll be a big three type now. Flick was alright but the villain was weak. Had some cool combat but I felt like it didn't really capitalise on the potential of a super, alien space adventure. Got a whole bunch of crazy powerful beings, I felt like the battles could've gone way bigger in scale. I don't want a final fight contained to one room, I want them flying at each other at light speed and their punches disintegrate the ship just as collateral damage.

I dunno.

I think we were all just salty about how badly they botched Secret Invasion too. Killed some cool characters for that. Character assassinated Fury. Then it's like he's playing a weird alt universe version in this film. Total whiplash there. Is he dark and serious and very flawed? Is he like the fun super spy uncle in space with the kooky family? I think this film would be elevated if you avoided watching SI beforehand.

CaptHayfever2025-12-05 07:38

They should've ignored the test groups that told them to shrink it.

lanwopc2025-12-05 03:37

Guardians of the Galaxy was seen as a risk at the time. It paid off, but it was by no means guaranteed to be a hit.

j1h152332025-12-05 05:11

I still think the Marvels is pretty good. I just rewatched it a few days ago and it’s funny

CaptHayfever2025-12-05 07:39

OP is only talking financials, not quality. I agree that it's good.

Affectionate-Bus9272025-12-05 14:01

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_rot