At this point The Marvels‘ ability to, if you want to corrupt Captain Marvel’s own catchphrase, sink lower, further, faster than any other MCU movie is almost impressive.
After the weakest opening weekend of any of Marvel Studios’ release over the past 15 years, the Brie Larson sequel then lost a full 79% of its already poor audience numbers by its second weekend. Coming off the back of its third weekend, things have somehow gotten even worse.
With estimates stating The Marvels brought home a mere $7.9 million internationally (not just domestically, but across the entire globe) across weekend 3, the film is now the very first MCU entry to drop out of the box office top five within just three weeks. For context, 2023’s own Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — which we were all sure was going to be Marvel’s biggest embarrassment of the year — took twice as long to do the same thing, only slipping out of the top five once it was six weeks old.
To be fair to The Marvels, this was an unusually competitive Thanksgiving weekend — those that beat it to the punch, if you’re interested, were Thanksgiving, Trolls Band Together, Wish, Napoleon, and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. However, that doesn’t disguise the fact that The Marvels picking up every unwanted record it can as it shrinks ever closer to a Quantum Realm-sized total gross is a huge blow to Marvel.
Once again, this makes Deadpool 3‘s status as the only MCU movie set to release in 2024 a smart but incredibly risky move. If it makes a $1 billion, as a very confident studio is apparently expecting, then it proves absence makes the heart grow fonder. If it doesn’t, then it might be time for Marvel to admit a longer break is needed. After all, The Marvels had its own DP3-teasing X-Men tie-ins and they’ve clearly done the film no favors. Unfortunately, it’s probably a good idea not to bet on Captain Marvel 3 getting the greenlight.
