2023 has been a good year for cinema, or so the good films nominated for the Golden Globes and the tremendous unexpected successes like Barbie, Super Mario Bros. or Oppenheimer dictate. However, it has been a terrible year for a kind of cinema: superhero movies. After a decade at the top, this year there have been several failures that have made the genre not as profitable as before… and this will have consequences.
For next year, there are planned 5 superhero movies, a number that, although is quite high, is much lower compared to the previous ones. And, in addition, there is only one from the Marvel Cinematic Universe among them. The specific movies are as follows:
- Madame Web – February 16
- Deadpool 3 – July 26
- Kraven the Hunter – August 30
- Joker: Follie a deux – October 4
- Venom 3 – November 8
As you can see, there is only one from UCM (Deadpool 3), there are three from Sony, taking advantage of this break, and one from DC but it doesn’t enter James Gunn’s new multiverse. So things are very different from this same year, but which movies have failed for this impasse to occur?
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania
For this movie, Marvel had placed a lot of trust, as it was the official introduction of the villain Kang, and for that they spent 200 million dollars plus all the promotion expenses. With this in mind, Marvel expected to make a box office around 600-700 million, but it has barely reached 476.1 million. A small failure that also exploded against the critics and highlighted Marvel’s current crisis.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods
The second part of Shazam! has fallen far short of the numbers of the first. Although there are no official investment data, we know that its budget has been around 125 million dollars without counting promotion… and it has barely managed to raise 133 million. It is clear, at first glance, that it has not worked at all, and it has only confirmed that DC needs a change of air.
Flash
Nominated as one of the worst movies of the year, Flash cost 200 million dollars plus promotion, and only managed to make 261. Taking into account that it was Warner’s biggest bet (along with Barbie) for this summer, it is clear that the studio has every reason to consider the changes that are already underway.
Blue Beetle
This innovative bet by DC Comics for a Latino superhero who is a kind of mix between Spider-Man and Iron Man seemed promising. However, it also failed at the box office with a revenue of 129.3 million dollars on a budget of 100.
The Marvels
The worst box office movie in the history of the MCU has also arrived this year. The Marvels only managed to make 202 million dollars out of an estimated budget of over 270, making it clear once and for all the bad moment the company is going through. If we add to that the series from the studio, which have also not performed well, the situation is deplorable.
