The Marvels Is Looking A Lot Like The Flash
Things haven’t been looking good for Disney and Marvel’s upcoming feature, The Marvels for quite some time, and now, the outcome is even more bleak. According to Deadline, the film’s four-week lead is projecting an opening of only $75-$80 million at the box office. Coming as a major disappointment, this number not only shows that interest has fallen in the title, as original projections were $90 million but, compared to Captain Marvel’s three-day opening of $153 million, it’s a big blow to the studios and a reminder of DC’s highly-anticipated summer flick, The Flash.
The Marvels‘ remarkably low box office projections look similar to the disappointing results from DC’s summer release of The Flash.
What was once thought to be the saving grace of the DCEU, even being dubbed as bigger and better than Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the box office sales for The Flash just weren’t there. A huge flop, the title only added to the DC’s ever-growing list of failures which have, this year alone, included Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Blue Beetle with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom also not looking super promising for the studio.
While the future of the MCU is in no way hinged on The Marvels, the studio has had an up and down year with the not-so-great release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania compared to the blinding success of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
There are an abundance of reasons for the fall in interest regarding The Marvels, with the major one being the SAG-AFTRA strike. The last film from the MCU during 2023 is facing something that the two before it, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania haven’t, and that’s found in its promotional tours.
Still, all hope is not lost for The Marvels as, over the summer, we saw Disney and Pixar’s Elemental climb up the box office after a terrible opening weekend.
Unlike the previous two films, which allowed stars like Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Paul Rudd, and Evangeline Lilly to promote their movies, the same can’t be said for The Marvels.
Sure, director Nia DaCosta can get out there along with the film’s executive producers and others pulling the behind-the-scenes strings but its three stars – Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, and Iman Vellani have their hands tied due to the strike. Even DaCosta has recognized that this would ultimately be a major detriment to the film as fans want to hear the stars talk about their journey of creating Marvel’s latest title.
To put it rather bluntly, The Marvels has also faced some backlash due to its leading cast which consists of three women. 2019’s Captain Marvel was the first of the comic-book-turned-film franchise to put the spotlight on a female superhero – Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel.
The Marvels‘ four-week lead is projecting an opening of only $75-$80 million at the box office.
From there, we’ve seen films like Black Widow and series including WandaVision come out that center on the women of the MCU but there’s still pushback from a certain group of fans who can’t seem to wrap their heads around female superheroes leading a film.
Still, all hope is not lost for The Marvels as, over the summer, we saw Disney and Pixar’s Elemental climb up the box office after a terrible opening weekend. In The Marvels, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) band together to solve the mystery behind why they keep swapping places after using their powers. The film is slated for a release on November 10.
