“Higher, faster, further,” might be Carol Danvers’ motto, but it definitely doesn’t apply to the box office projections of the MCU’s next team-up, The Marvels.
The Nia DaCosta’s directorial effort scheduled to land in theaters on November 10th is currently tracking at $75M – $80M for its three-day opening weekend. That’s around 50% less than Captain Marvel’s debut, which earned $153M in its opening weekend. According to Deadline, buzz around the sequel to Brie Larson’s superhero vehicle — also starring Iman Vellani and Teyonah Parris — has suffered due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, which has severely limited the studio from pushing the film in the press and at conventions like San Diego Comic-Con.
Without stars making the rounds to promote the film, any interest in the MCU entry must be built through smart marketing tactics, but even there Marvel seems to have failed. The PR campaign for The Marvels started much later than the standard 12 weeks other superhero team-ups have gotten. That could be due to a lack of confidence in the film’s ability to draw crowds back to theaters during a period of superhero fatigue amongst movie fans.
Deadline reports that The Marvels is “well below the top-performing MCU titles among men under 35,” and that among both male and female audiences, it falls behind recent movies like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in terms of interest. With some fans unsure of where the film fits in the ever-expanding multiverse being built by the studio, it sounds like even the tease of an X-Men crossover might not be enough to save it at the box office this month.
(Via Deadline)
