It was supposed to come in above eighty-million in US dollars at the domestic box office. Even that number was muted from typical Marvel releases, at a time when the box office is roaring back to more normal numbers. The eighty-million number would have permitted a mundane haul to still hit the narrative Disney likes to keep in the trade publications, which is then disseminated throughout the rest of the copy-and-paste press articles. Yet even with a humble-for-Marvel prediction, the movie came in with 12% lower actual revenues.
$71 million for a big budget Marvel movie and a rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes is what The Eternals will have to settle with. A 48% critic rating, and heavy upcoming competition, likely means a steep drop-off in the coming weeks.
As the movie is coming in lower than expected, which was already lowered in the first place, most in the narrative-driven media are attempting to spin the opening in headlines, then bury the bad news late in the article. Compare, for example, the way the box office results are presented in the headline by NBC News versus Indie Wire:
NBC News: The Eternals Soars to $71 Million
Indie Wire: The Eternals Opens to a Marvel Box Office Low
Probably not helping The Walt Disney Company is the expected fallout from celebrities absorbing the low performance. As we covered before, Disney went to bat this time in refusing to edit out depictions of same-sex relationships. This is directly in contrast to how they reacted to requests for edits of the same type of material in The Rise of Skywalker. So what changed?
As Manu Lopez brought to attention, in the case of The Eternals, China had already banned the movie. So when Disney refused to censor the film for Gulf nations, there was very little to lose… the movie market for Qatar isn’t even in the same galaxy as Beijing. It was a strategically smart time for Disney to pander to social movements in the west with almost no financial hit for doing so.
“However, while Disney may promote that they are refusing the changes, the truth is that The Eternals has already been banned in China over a separate issue. This means that denying changes of this manner is far, far less expensive for Disney given that the film will already be unavailable in the second-largest film market in the world. In the past Disney has complied with censor demands in order to get movies into Beijing.”
But celebrities just can’t play along with Disney’s scheme. Actress Angelina Jolie has been making news calling the Gulf nations that banned the film “ignorant“. And no, I’m not arguing against Jolie’s statement… but I am recognizing the difficulty this puts Disney and Marvel into. Remember that Marvel has had difficulty as of late getting their movies into China; having an actress calling censorship countries “ignorant” is unlikely to win them any additional love in the Middle Kingdom. For Marvel, without China added to their global box office, they’re going to have a very difficult time ever hitting those Infinity Saga numbers in the future.
The latest Marvel film will now get ready to go head-to-head with Ghostbusters Afterlife — a battle which will be won by proton packs and ectoplasmic spirits. For Kevin Feige and his continued struggle with a new Walt Disney Company administration, this will be a bruising hit against his current attempts to maneuver the Marvel Cinematic Universe away from beloved characters and towards lesser-known subjects. Shang-Chi showed that Feige still had the magic after a pandemic and with an obscure lead… but The Eternals has proven he’s no Midas.
Marvel isn’t invincible, and The Eternals just displayed it.
