While Bob Iger Blames Covid-19 And Lack Of Executive Oversight For 'The Marvels' Box Office Failure, Ms. Marvel Actress Iman Vellani Says They Need To Make "The Audience Care About Their Characters"

Bradley Cooper and Bob Iger attend the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Premiere at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood CA on Thursday, April 27, 2023.

The Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger blamed The Marvels‘ box office failure on Covid-19 and a lack of executive oversight while Ms. Marvel actress Iman Vellani notes the company is not making the audience care about their characters.

Bob Iger attend the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Premiere at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood CA on Thursday, April 27, 2023.
(Photo: Alex J. Berliner/ABImages)

The Marvels is the worst performing Marvel Cinematic Universe film of all time. The movie has currently only grossed $77.5 million at the domestic box office and $110.1 million internationally for a global gross of just $187.7 million.

The film has also seen its domestic box office grosses fall off a cliff in the film’s third week at the box office with two days posting sub $500,000 grosses. November 27th saw the film only gross $339,774 and on Tuesday, November 28th the film only grossed $495,315. The film will be hard pressed to achieve a $250 million global gross. That’s less than the film’s entire production budget, which current estimates indicate is around $300 million.

The film’s box office has been a disaster of epic proportions.

(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.

During an appearance at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit 2023, Iger was asked by host Andrew Ross Sorkin about The Marvels box office, “A number of these films have not performed, they have not performed the way they used to. People question the creative magic at Disney. You can look at The Marvels, I’m curious why you think that disappointed. You could look at Wish, Indiana Jones. What’s happened?”

Iger responded, “I think you have to look at in a couple of ways. First of all, I think the movie business is changing, actually. Box office today is about 75% of what it was pre-Covid. I think we have conditioned the audience to expect that these films will be on streaming platforms relatively quickly and that the experience of accessing them and watching them in the home is better than it ever was. One, easier to access in terms of technology. Two, just the visuals, better sets in your living room than before, and a bargain, when you think about it, streaming Disney+ you can get for $7 a month. That’s a lot cheaper than taking your whole family to a film.”

“So, I think the bar is now raised in terms of quality about what gets people out of their homes and into movie theaters. Some of it is just being part of basically the social wave. Certainly, Barbie and Oppenheimer did that for two other studios. And so I think that’s one thing. Second, in our particularly case and specifically about some of those films, they were not as good, not as high in quality as some of their predecessors, our films, and as they should have been, particularly in this environment.”

When pressed on specifics, Iger said, “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,” he added.

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.”

(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.

While Iger put the blame on The Marvels‘ failure on Covid-19, lack of executive oversight, and stretching Marvel Studios employees too much by pushing into streaming, actress Iman Vellani, who plays Ms. Marvel in The Marvels detailed the films are not connecting with audiences anymore.

When asked by The Direct how she thinks Marvel Studios can recapture the magic of previous MCU phases, Vellani stated, “I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s about just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Because then, like, what’s left? You know, I think it’s just about making the audience care about their characters. And I think they’ve established so many wonderful characters in the last phase of the MCU that it would be nice to see them all again and see them team up.”

She also claimed that teaming the characters up with each other will help, “I think, because there are so many new characters people want to like, start shipping people together and be like, ‘Oh, seeing Kamala and like the Red Guardian together.’ Like imagining all these pair-ups, and I think that would definitely pay off. It’ll be like, you know, the next Avengers.”

While Vellani does hint at the Studios’ lack of creativity by being unable to make the audience care about the characters anymore, she also seems to have embraced modern Disney and Marvel Studios thinking. Specifically the idea that embracing TikTok trends will somehow make a story good.

Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case. The Marvels is the perfect example of it. It is a team-up film with Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, and Ms. Marvel and clearly the audience did not find it enticing enough to go to the theaters to see it.

Instead, audiences look longingly at Phase 1 films that told solid stories and didn’t have all kinds of team-ups and mash-ups. Films like Iron Man, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor. These films focused on singular characters and told stories that have wide appeal due to their timelessness.

That’s what Marvel needs to get back to. They need to embrace their classic and timeless comic book stories and adapt them accurately. They also need to ditch derivative characters like Ms. Marvel that were clearly created solely for identity politics.