THB #388: Disney Markets Movies

Elemental did better this weekend than Super Mario Bros’ opening day. So there’s that.

After going on about What Happened To The Flash yesterday, some wrote in to demand more attention to the even bigger disaster this weekend, Elemental.

Judging Disney’s marketing department these days is a complicated effort. As the company rolls, it’s Marvel, then Animation, then all the other stuff (unless it’s Avatar), and when they get around to making some movies, LucasFilm shoots up the list. There have been a total of 0 LucasFilm theatrical releases during the last 2.5 COVID-recovery years, with one about to drop next week… but no light sabers involved.

Before getting to what Disney did to its very own Pixar, let’s start with The King of Cinderella’s Castle, Marvel.

Lots of people are writing out there about Marvel fatigue. And my thought is, first and last, “What did you think was going to happen when you killed off what you built for the last dozen years?”

I’m not arguing that they didn’t have to start the machine again. They did. When your above the line is well over $100 million and your talent is so rich that they really don’t want to live in that bubble anymore, it’s time. Nature (as as I call it, The Weather).

So since the unblip of Endgame, what has Disney marketing had to work with? Black Widow (postmortem), Shang-Chi, Eternals, Dr Strange, Thor, Ant-Man & Co, and Guardians.

I loved Shang-Chi and give it big props for really being an early days success post-COVID. Eternals was kind of a car wreck, as action movies go. The rest, for better and worse, are Avengers leftovers. This is not an insult, just a factual observation. Domestically, the lowest grossing films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are Eternals, The 1st Captain America movie, Ant-Man, Thor, Black Widow, Thor again, Ant-Man again, Shang-Chi, and Dr. Strange. The Strange and The Shang are my 2 of favorite Marvel movies. So again… not an insult.

So… if Ant-Man did $180m domestic and Ant-Man & The Wasp did $217 million, is $215 million for Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania doing $215 milllion really a surprise, much less a failure?

If Thor did $181 million, Thor: The Dark World did $206 million, and Thor: Ragnarok (another film I love) did $315 million, is $343 million for Thor: Love & Thunder really a flop? Ragnarok was revelatory and did $854 million worldwide in 2017. Love & Thunder was not and still did $761 million.

Black Widow was literally dead and the theatrical market was just re-launching when her film came out. And still, it was the #4 domestic film of 2021, the first of those 4 to be released (meaning closest to COVID). And the film still did $380m worldwide.

Guardians of The Galaxy, Vol 3 not only promised death and that it would be the end of the franchise as we’ve known it, it sealed it with James Gunn signing with DC. And still, it fell right in between G1 ($334m) and G2 ($390m) with $345m. The same was true of international.

So I ask again… what the hell were people expecting? It’s like Wall Street out there… everything is expected to grow constantly or it’s worthless. Bad call! I don’t know if The Next Gen of Marvel is going to end up ever being as strong as the OGs. But the sense of panic is wildly overstated. The reality is that budgets over $200 million, with less of a box office response, can’t continue. And also… a WandaVision movie at a $125 million budget could have been profitable. So spending and scale is Marvel’s current challenge. And unless they find their next Robert Downey, Jr with one of these movies, that’s not going to change in this next decade.

On to Animation…