After it was quickly clarified that The Marvels wasn’t one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s cheapest movies to produce but one of its most expensive, even more pressure was heaped upon the sequel to succeed.
Unfortunately, the early box office projections have been less than encouraging to put it lightly, with Brie Larson’s second headline outing in danger of securing the franchise’s worst-ever opening weekend if it comes in at the lowest end of those $50-75 million estimates. Of course, there are many people out there excited at the prospect of it bombing for reasons that don’t need explained, but an even more ominous development has it lagging behind a pair of high-profile duds that helped derail the DCEU.
At a cost of $219 million, The Marvels is more expensive than both Black Adam and The Flash, the former of which saw the biggest star of the planet booted out of the entire franchise before the latter wound up as one of the biggest money-losers in the history of cinema. In short, not a great duo to be compared to.
And yet, Box Office Theory has crunched the numbers to determine that if The Marvels stays true to its current estimate of roughly $8 million in Thursday previews – and then follows the same multiplier laid down by Black Panther: Wakanda Forever across the Friday-Sunday frame, it’ll finish up with $51 million in the bank.
That wouldn’t just be an all-time low for the MCU, but worse than the $67 million of Black Adam, The Flash‘s $55 million – and if you really want to hammer it home – The Amazing Spider-Man, 2005’s Fantastic Four, 2003’s Hulk, and 2000’s X-Men as well, and that’s unadjusted for inflation.