Marvel Studios Rethinks Its Post-Marvel Cinematic Strategy – The Hollywood Reporter

From left: Iman Villani, Brie Larson, and Teyonah Parris in The Marvels.

Courtesy of Laura Radford/Marvel

Perform anything but great Wonders It’s a moment of reckoning for Marvel Studios, the production company that has been the box office superhero for most of the past 15 years since. Iron Man She came onto the scene in 2008.

During the weekend of November 10-12, Wonders It debuted to $46.1 million in North America, the worst opening in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has generated more than $30 billion in global movie ticket sales. The 33rd installment of the MCU was battered by declining audience exit scores and a B CinemaScore.

But it wasn’t the first warning sign that something was amiss within Marvel regarding quality control as Feige’s team went on to double-produce shows for streaming; Features Eternity And Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantania They were also slapped with a B CinemaScore, while audiences began complaining about having to keep up with an increasing number of shows on Disney+ to understand the overall MCU story.

Behind the scenes, Marvel Studios and Disney were well aware of this Wonders He was in trouble before he made it to the big screen. Sources say there was also an acknowledgment that Feige and his team needed time to evaluate their theatrical tentpoles. Hollywood Reporter. On November 8, Bob Iger said during an earnings call that the Disney movie empire had “lost focus” due to an emphasis on quantity over quality.
In the rush to feed Disney+ under Bob Chapek’s regime (although it was Iger himself who started this push before Chapek’s reign.) sources say Feige and his team felt this mandate keenly, to the detriment of Marvel movies.

One day later, Marvel and Disney revealed that they would reduce the number of superhero films they will release in 2024 from three to one. This news was published at the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike, and during the work stoppage, which shut down production on Deadpool 3is certainly part of the reason for some of the date changes, and it was not the only reason, sources say.

Shawn Levy and Ryan Reynolds Deadpool 3 It will be Marvel and Disney’s only superhero blockbuster in 2024, and will now open on July 26 instead of May 3. The high-profile three-parter, co-starring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, is the first of its kind. dead pool It will be released by Disney since its acquisition of 20th Century Fox and is also the first R-rated picture to be released by Marvel Studios. The marquee title is described as a multi-verse featurette that will set the stage for the upcoming Marvel movie Effingfilms.

Marvel Studios Captain America: New World Orderwhich was scheduled to hit theaters on July 26, has been postponed nine months to February 14, 2025. Which will give the studio time to film additional material. Marvel anti-hero movie Lightningstarring Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan, moves from December 20, 2024 to July 25, 2025.

Of the 2,025 titles, codestarring Mahershala Ali, has been delayed by nine months, with its release date pushed back from February 14, 2025, to November 7, 2025. code And Lightning We were planning to start production last summer but didn’t have the scripts ready in time so it was shut down amid the writers’ strike in May. The release date changes announced on November 9 means Marvel has four superhero pictures set for 2025 when included The Fantastic Four The reboot, scheduled for release on May 2 (ex dead pool, The Fantastic Four arrived from the twentieth century), but this could change.

Instead of being a direct sequel to the billion dollar movie Captain Marvel, Wonders It’s something of a mash-up. In the film, Larson is joined by Iman Vellani, the breakout star of the Disney+ series Ms. MarvelBeside WandaVisionTeyonah Parris as an adult version Captain Marvel Monica Rambeau character. Mixing and matching characters for sequels is a game plan Marvel has used in the past in films like Captain America: Civil Warwhich featured almost every Marvel character imaginable, but with much different results, grossing $1.15 billion in 2016.

“Why not simply make it Captain Marvel 2? Why produce? Wonders When your audience got to know Brie Larson’s character, sympathized with her, and even recognized her as a hero? More importantly, why offer people the same characters and stories as on Disney+ if you expect them to go to the theater together? “Disney/Marvel have diluted their product,” says one film producer. “Of course, an image makes or breaks for other reasons as well, but losing a lot of value as a result of image over image is rare and difficult to do.”

Captain Marvel It debuted with $153.4 million in North America on its way to earning $1.13 billion worldwide, not adjusted for inflation. To be sure, the film had a clear advantage in that it was teased in the 2018 post-credit scene Avengers: Infinity War, While its honorary star was a player in 2019 Avengers: Endgame (It was released between two huge Marvel movies.)

So far, rival DC has been the superhero studio that has suffered the biggest ups and downs, with a significant number of its films opening with $50 million or less (by comparison, many MCU releases have started with $100 million or more domestically). This summer, DC the light It debuted to a dismal $55 million domestically on its way to reaching $270.6 million worldwide.

“The uneven performance of all superhero films in recent years should serve as a wake-up call regarding how these films are conceived, executed and marketed moving forward,” notes Paul Dergarabedian, a box office analyst at Comscore.

Aaron Koch contributed to this story.