‘The Marvels’ breaking a surprising MCU runtime record could be what Disney needs to claw back the $965 million it flushed down the drain

It’s all riding on The Marvels. Not only has the MCU had a rough year of it, after kicking off Phase Five with a flop threequel and a Disney Plus dud, Disney itself has always had a punishing 2023 thanks to a run of box office disappointments. Enter the aforementioned Brie Larson sequel, then, which the studio must be desperately hoping can recapture the success of its 2019 predecessor. Seeing as its haters do their best to drown out the truth, it always bears repeating: Captain Marvel earned $1 billion worldwide.

Nevertheless, it has to be said that a few The Marvels updates have got us worried. For once, director Nia DaCosta’s promise that it’s going to be “wacky and silly” is more of a threat to audiences who are still recovering from the sight of M.O.D.O.K.’s rear-end in Quantumania than she was probably intending. What’s more, according to the latest rumors, the film could end up being the shortest MCU movie of them all by quite some margin. As per alleged intel, The Marvels may clock in at just 1 hour and 38 minutes.

Seeing as the current record-holder is The Incredible Hulk with 1 hour and 52 minutes, that’s a severely shortened runtime by Marvel standards and much closer to something you’d expect from Pixar or Disney’s animated movies. On the face of it, then, this isn’t encouraging, as Marvel fans generally aren’t ones to complain when the MCU gets mammoth-sized — just look at how popular the bladder-busting Avengers: Endgame and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 are.

On the other hand, a slight runtime might be exactly what the doctor ordered. One of the biggest criticisms used in conjunction with the threat of superhero fatigue is the bloat that people feel has happened to the genre, with there just being too much Marvel and DC content around. But if DaCosta can hand it something that’s snappy and energetic with a sense of fun to it then it could easily be a big hit with audiences, earning the kind of positive word of mouth that results in a breakaway hit.

We know that Disney threw away a whopping total of $965 million on four projects that flopped hard — with Marvel’s Quantumania and Secret Invasion among them — so The Marvels repeating the performance of its precursor and bringing home $1 billion would be the perfect way to end 2023 on a redeeming note for the Mouse House.