Wakanda Forever has massive customer demand, but can Kevin Feige’s Marvel deliver the goods as audiences largely reject MCU film after film?
What was the point of Phase Four for the MCU? Was it to throw a bunch of unconnected storylines out there and see what sticks? If so, the answer is “not much.” Outside of Spider-Man: No Way Home, a Sony-produced and Sony-written multiversal extravaganza, not a single movie or show inside Disney’s Marvel Phase Four offerings did much at all of pushing the needle forward in terms of narrative and especially not in terms of money.
Here’s something to ponder: how many other studios could have a string of box office failures like Marvel has just experienced and come away with the press mostly whistling past the graveyard?
Let’s add them up together.
Black Widow — Box office failure
Eternals — Box office failure
Shang-Chi — May have broke even
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — Biggest MCU drop ever, modest profit
Thor: Love and Thunder — Box office failure
How about streaming?
Wandavision — Excellent ratings for its time
Loki — Excellent ratings
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier — Lower ratings
What If — Lower ratings
Hawkeye — Much lower ratings
Ms. Marvel — Off the radar low ratings
Two trends become readily apparent. On the box office side, Disney-produced Marvel movies have massive openings and then quickly collapse in a post Thanos, post Ironman world. This either leads to the movie flopping or it leads to it barely eclipsing its production and marketing costs for the studio. On the streaming side, enthusiasm was high for both Wandavision and Loki, but have steadily dropped since then. Now, Ms. Marvel failed to even reach the top ten for original streaming shows according to Nielsen ratings. That seems to be a result of fans turning off Disney+ shows after bait-and-switch tactics of naming a series after a cool character fans want and then usurping them with a different lead.
That’s why it was so bizarre seeing Kevin Feige present at SDCC this year as a fully compliant crowd whooped and hollered with each announcement he made. How strange it is to see a group so excited while Feige rolls off another list of loosely-connected properties and simultaneously Thor: Love and Thunder is bombing at the box office. That’s just something you don’t see every day. Ponder on the fact that as Feige was putting on his game face and pretending everything is hunky-dory, he also knew the Friday numbers for Thor — another abysmal week-to-week drop (64%). Even with the highest average ticket price of any film ever made, Thor 4 has totaled only $524,770,696 and seems to have a ceiling around $550 million. That’s probably at least $150 million short of a profit.
So what is the MCU to do?
The Wakanda Forever trailer is doing better than I ever could have imagined. The love for Chadwick Boseman and the concept of a fictional Wakanda that represents African accomplishments is something the entire society seems to have latched onto. That could equal a box office success like Spider-Man No Way Home… and that would be great for a Disney that needs it. In half-a-day, the trailer has amassed more than eight million views on its official channel and an overwhelming positive ratio reception. The issue then becomes whether or not Marvel and director Ryan Coogler can deliver what must be one of the most daunting tasks ever. How do you make a movie that must essentially be about an actor who has passed away and whose hero became a societal and ideological symbol? How do you do that respectfully? And can you do that when the trailer appears to be moving into a very female-centric storyline?
There’s nothing wrong with any of that. It’s just going to be difficult to do it successfully. It would be like trying to do a new Christopher Nolan Batman movie that is all about Heath Ledger’s Joker without Ledger there. Except reverse it and make the character a hero to the world.
I don’t say any of that to dismiss or degrade Black Panther Wakanda Forever. I say it because it seems there is tremendous desire and goodwill for the film. So Marvel will either do itself wonderfully if it succeeds in the very difficult task or it will damage its brand significantly if it fails to deliver for audiences the almost spiritual desire they want out of the movie. That’s a tall order. But at a time when only Sony seems to know how to make money off of Marvel movies, the studio really can’t afford to miss bigly on it.
After all, let’s look at the newly announced Phase 5 offerings and see if this is getting any better:
Quantumania will do okay. Maybe.
Secret Invasion is likely to do better than Ms. Marvel, but… how much more?
She-Hulk Attorney at Law looks like a parody. I have no idea how that will translate to ratings.
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 is likely to do a profit on brand alone.
I can’t see any likely scenario for Echo to do well.
I expect Loki Season 2 to come in under the first season unless the writing is very good.
The Marvels will almost certainly bomb. Marvel knows that and has put it at the graveyard of summer releases.
Past that, it seems too far out there to really predict, but let’s just say I don’t see Agatha rocking the streaming scene to record-breaking ratings and/or subscribers.
It feels to me that a number of factors are pulling the MCU down to the point that this could go either way… the MCU could remain relevant or it could really fall into people no longer caring like where Star Wars has gone. First, a push into identiteriansim has sidelined the big heroes of Marvel instead of coupling them with new and exciting characters people would have loved equally. Second, a need to produce vast amounts of content is watering down the quality. That’s another of Iger’s Disney+ poison pill for Chapek. And third, the franchise has moved into self-parody at this point and rarely takes its movies seriously anymore. That’s thrown away much of the tension, especially when all of reality is threatened casually in just about every movie nowadays. The scope is all wrong.
So Wakanda Forever is a big one. If it does well, Marvel has more lives to keep playing. If that one has a massive drop-off and loses money, watch out. And Feige had better watch out as well. Shareholders may have lots of love for the money he gave them before, but we’re now into years of losses and — far more importantly — lower merchandising. Shareholders hate that.
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The trailer does a great job of getting me excited for Wakanda Forever…BUT Disney has a history now of portraying their MCU movies much differently in the trailers vs. the actual movie. But if the leaks/rumors are true, this is yet another Disney female-power movie, with none of the heroes in the movie being male. If that’s your thing this will be the movie for you. If not, then it will be a ‘skip it’ movie.
Is Black Panther in Wakanda? It sounds like another bait and switch.
Only Guardians of the Galaxy might do well if they stick to the formula of having original characters do things instead of another gender or sexual orientation swap. I’m not betting against their Woke gay ideological agenda.
I agree that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will be extremely important with how Phase 4 is remembered. And the fact that Phase 4 concludes with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever shows that Feige (maybe with pressure from Chapek) agrees with a lot of the critcisim.
As for Phase 4 movies thus far (I defer to you with streaming, although with streaming, what matters is the reduction of churn, not ratings, and even Netflix is facing the churn beast).
Black Widow — Technically Box office failure, yet also Disney+ Premier Access (which did give Disney all the money earned, and Covid were factors, so a * is fair to add).
Eternals — break even (earned 2 * budget)
Shang-Chi — broke even, very close to proft (agree with you for the most part, although fair to add its box office performance was promising/positive enough to relax Sony, along with other studios, that they kept release dates for that fall into winter – i.e. Venom 2 and Spider-Man:NWH)
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — Profit, earned 4.8* budget – Half way through the year, only one movie has hit a billion thus far, which happens to be a miracle phenomenon like Black Panther, Titanic, Avatar, as examples. One billion may be the new Two billion.
Thor: Love and Thunder — Break Even (currently 2.4 * budget, doubtful it will reach 3).
Along with Pixar, if Marvel is more mindful with production budgets, a lot of this will be removed as a shareholder concern. Will not be surprised if that is a top priority for Chapek.
Your math is off. Breakeven includes marketing that’s usually 50% more. The rule of thumb is 3x production budget or 2x budget plus marketing.
Incorrect. 2x = break even, 3x or more is profit. This is what all analysts mention, and the trades. If you disagree, debate with them, instead.
If you don’t want to include marketing, that’s your problem. Marvel movies haven’t been profitable since 2021. That’s Disney’s own financial statements.
In fourth quarter 2021,
“The company released films such as “Black Widow,” “Free Guy” and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” during those three months and delivered solid box-office results.
However, higher operating and marketing costs led the company’s content sales and licensing segment to post an operating loss of $65 million during the quarter.”
I don’t believe the hype for Black Panther. I don’t remember how well the first movie did, but I never liked it that much; and same then as today, I think everybody likes it and gets such good press because of identity politics. Nothing against Chadwick or the character, but I liked both much better in Civil War. It was just him and his vendetta driving him, until he finally let vengeance stop consuming him in the end. Great, great stuff.
Marvel’s big foundational three.
Ironman was the first movie. Hulk was the second. Captain America was the third. Hulk failed, so they added Thor and Thor’s movie was okay.
Who are the current three? Spider-Man, Dr Strange, and Star-Lord.
Yet Disney doesn’t control Spider-Man. Dr Strange 2 was a terrible story. Star-Lord is delayed into another phase.
It’s fairly obvious that Phase 4 has worked out much differently than Marvel had intended.
Captain Marvel wasn’t the success as a character Marvel had thought she’d be.
Marvel/Disney needlessly shot themselves in the foot with the whole James Gunn incident, which ultimately derailed Guardians 3 for years. Remember, it was intended to come early in Phase 4, and was meant to be a pivotal film for the MCU (and likely would have been a proper crossover with Thor).
Finally, there was Chadwick Boseman’s passing, which forced a complete re-think of BP2.
Basically, of the main Disney owned MCU properties, the only one they managed to get out roughly as-intended was Thor 4 (and they’ve degraded that character to little more than a punchline). G3 will be different (and much later). CM2 has morphed into the Marvels (and will flop). BP2 (rightly) grew into Wakanda Forever.
Wakanda Forever will open huge, just on love/sentimentality for T’Challa (the trailer also is extremely good – it’s no surprise this is the BIG takeaway from SDCC). How well it does in the long run will be a reflection of whether they can craft a compelling story without Chadwick Boseman’s magic.
Shuri as the new Black Panther will not resonate as well as some people think.
Regardless of how much money this makes, Disney/Marvel’s long term problem will likely still remain: they’ve got no shortage of female driven properties, but they’ve written out, spoiled, or lost their best male driven ones.
If there is an “Alan Ladd” type at Disney / Lucasfilm I have the stories for you! The ones you’ve been looking for that have the plans Disney needs to get Lucasfilm back on track. Serious parties may contact me.
This is a “I’m Frodo, and I’ll take the ring to Mordor moment.”
Most every fan knew the MSheU was coming, by the end of Avengers: End Game. Marvel was warned with Ms. Marvel. Fans gave them a shot across the bow. The forced female grouping during the battle of End Game was the shot back, telling us what would be coming. They made good on their promise, and fans, in kind, made good on their promise that they wouldn’t show up, if they would be preached to through approved messaging and an agenda.
Well… Marvel did this to themselves. Feige, with Disney, had an agenda and they pushed it. It’s failing miserably, but there’s no hint to it ending anytime soon. Most fans are just walking away, unimpressed with anything new. I, personally, have fatigue, not from superhero movies, but of agendized superhero movies. I don’t need it in my life and I’ve walked away.
It’s really sad… I never thought I’d get over the excitement of new superhero or Star Wars content, but it happened. I didn’t expect it, I didn’t want it, but these studios/companies have succeeded in driving me away, and not really caring about doing so.