A planned series starring Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau aka Photon was scrapped by Marvel Studios following the box office failure of The Marvels.
(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 courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.
Daniel RPK reports via ComicsTalk616 on X that “A series centered around Monica Rambeau (Photon) was reportedly in the works at Marvel Studios but following ‘THE MARVELS’ reception, it was axed. Her story will now continue in another project.”
ComicsTalk616 on X
According to The-Numbers, the film only grossed $199.7 million in its entire run. It only grossed $84.5 million domestically and another $115.2 million internationally. Domestically, the film only sold 7,836,656 tickets. It is the worst performing film in Marvel Cinematic Universe history. The previous worst performing film was 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, which grossed $265.5 million and that’s without even factoring in inflation.
Due to the film’s poor box office performance, Marvel Studios and its parent company The Walt Disney Company threw in the towel on the movie after its fourth weekend at the domestic box office. According to Variety, the company sent a memo detailing, “With ‘The Marvels’ box office now winding down, we will stop weekend reporting of international/global grosses on this title.”
(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.
Box office analyst OMB Reviews noted back in December the film would likely lose Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney upwards of $200 million.
He said, “It’s getting close to $200 million worldwide so, hey, it still has a chance of crossing $200 million. Still going to be a $200M+ flop by the end of the day though.”
Based on reporting by Caroline Reid at Forbes, the film had a massive production budget of $274 million as of September 2022. However, Reid noted Marvel Studios did receive a $55 million tax credit. That brought the film’s net budget down to $219.8 million.
Yet, the production budget did not include any production expenses in 2023 and did not include post-production expenses either. Reid explained that the film’s budget “is expected to soar in the next set of financial statements as almost a year of post-production and extensive reshoots took place after the latest financial statements were filed.”
If the film’s total costs come to around $300 million, which is highly likely, the movie will lose The Walt Disney Company not just $200 million, but upwards of $200 million. At a $300 million production budget, the break even for the movie is somewhere around $750M+ when you factor in the cut that theaters take from the box office grosses as well as Disney’s advertising spend for the movie.
(L-R): Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan, Teyonah Parris as Captain Monica Rambeau, Brie Larson as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers, and Zawe Ashton as Dar-Benn in Marvel Studios’ THE MARVELS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.
Disney CEO Bob Iger blamed COVID-19 and a lack of executive oversight on the film’s failure during an interview at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit 2023.
Iger stated, “Well, The Marvels was shot during Covid. There wasn’t as much supervision on the set, so to speak, where we have executives there really looking over what’s being done day after day after day. And that was a result of mostly of Covid, but at the same time we increased our output tremendously to feed the streaming platforms. Too much, by the way. Definite mistake.”
“Quality needs attention to deliver quality,” Iger continued. “It doesn’t happen by accident and quantity in our case diluted quality and Marvel suffered greatly from that. So there are different reasons. And I’m the first, I’ve been very public about it and I would say right now my number one priority is to help the studio turn around creatively.”
Iger then hedged, “Now, let’s also put it in perspective. We set the bar so high. Year after year after year, we had the best performance in the business, probably for a decade. And I’m not sure another studio will ever achieve some of the numbers that we achieved. We got to the point where a film didn’t do a billion dollars in global box office we were disappointed. That’s an unbelievable high standard. And we’ve got to get more realistic.”
Teyonah Parris as Captain Monica Rambeau in Marvel Studios’ THE MARVELS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.
What do you make of this rumor that a planned Photon series was scrapped by Marvel Studios after The Marvels’ box office disaster?
