After Disastrous Box Office Results In 2023, Marvel Reportedly Lays Off Around 15 Employees

After a disastrous 2023 that saw two of its three movies lose tens of millions of dollars at the box office, and its Disney+ programs saw viewership significantly decline, Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Studios have reportedly laid off 15 employees.

Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie in The Marvels (2023), Marvel Studios

Marvel Studios lost hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office last year on both The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. The Marvels had at minimum a production budget of $267 million, but that number did not take into effect reshoots that were done in 2023 before the film was released in November. Nevertheless, the film failed to even gross $200 million worldwide at the box office resulting in hundreds of millions lost by Marvel Studios.

On top of The Marvels, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania had an estimated production budget of $200 million and only grossed $463.6 million worldwide. In order for the film to have broken even, which would cover marketing costs as well as the split that theaters take it needed to gross at least $500 million.

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The only film that made some profit for Marvel in 2023 was Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. The film grossed $845.4 million worldwide. It had a $250 million production budget meaning the film surpassed its break even point of $625 million.

However, the film still fared worse than previous entries in the franchise. The first film grossed $770.8 million in 2014 and the second film grossed $869 million. If you factor in inflation, the first film grossed $992.1 million in 2023 dollars. The second film grossed $1.05 billion in 2023 dollars.

On top of these film failures, Marvel Studios also saw huge declines in viewership for its television shows. Loki Season 2’s debut in 2023 only brought in 446 million minutes viewed. The Season 1 debut brought in 731 million minutes viewed despite Disney+ having far less subscribers in 2021 compared to 2023.

The company’s most recent television release, Echo, was seemingly its worst yet. All five episodes of the show were released at the same time on both Disney+ and Hulu. Despite releasing more episodes and on a separate streaming service, the show only brought in 731 million minutes viewed in its debut.

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This poor performance seems to have finally caught up to the people working on these projects. The Hollywood Reporter’s Aaron Couch and Borys Kit reported that Marvel Studios laid off “around 15 people … including junior level employees in production and development.”

These layoffs come in the wake of The Walt Disney Company’s CEO Bob Iger saying during a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley that the output at Marvel had been reduced by the company and he had personally killed a number of projects across the board at Disney.

Iger said, “You have to kill things you no longer believe in, and that’s not easy in this business, because either you’ve gotten started, you have some sunk costs, or it’s a relationship with either your employees or with the creative community.”

“It’s not an easy thing, but you got to make those tough calls. We’ve actually made those tough calls. We’ve not been that public about it, but we’ve killed a few projects already that we just didn’t feel were strong enough,” he added.

(L-R): Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan, Brie Larson as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers, and Teyonah Parris as Captain Monica Rambeau in Marvel Studios’ THE MARVELS. Photo by Laura Radford. © 2023 MARVEL.

Speaking specifically to Marvel, Iger said, “A lot of people think it’s audience fatigue, it’s not audience fatigue. They want great films. And if you build it great, they will come and there are countless examples of that. Some are ours and some are others’. Oppenheimer is a perfect example of that. Just a fantastic film.”

“Focus is really important,” he shared. “We reduced the output of Marvel, both number of films they make and the number of TV shows, and that really becomes critical, but I feel good about the team. I feel good about the IP we’re making. I talked about a lot of the projects. We look years ahead, really. And it’s iterative.”

In fact, Iger noted he’s been watching Disney films more than three times in hopes of trying to improve them after they’ve already been filmed, “Not only do you look at the films you’re making, you look at every part of that process, who the directors are, who’s being cast, reading scripts, I personally watch films three to five times with the team and just create a culture of excellence and respect, which is really important with the creative community,”