The Marvels has experienced an unprecedented week 2 drop. The movie, which is a direct sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel, is the 33rd feature in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the third in Phase 5. The movie sees Captain Marvel’s (Brie Larson) powers become entangled with Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), forcing them to team up to take down a dangerous new threat.
Per Variety, the The Marvels box office has taken a huge hit in its second weekend. After earning the lowest opening weekend of the entire MCU, it has now grossed an additional $10.2 million at the domestic box office, a staggering drop of 79%. This is the worst weekend 2 drop for a comic book movie, even more than the 74% slump earned by the notorious Sony outing Morbius.
How The Marvels Compares To The Rest Of The MCU
Though this box office result is grim, the The Marvels release comes at a time when the MCU is already experiencing diminishing returns both critically and commercially. Although the previous MCU movie Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 had a solid performance at the box office, the prior movie Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania previously posted the worst weekend 2 drop of the franchise. That title had a slump of 69.9% following its considerably more solid opening weekend gross of $106.1 million.
However, the new movie having both the worst opening and the worst drop simultaneously is probably not a good sign. This gross was partially impacted by the fact that the The Marvels cast was unavailable to promote the movie in the lead-up to its release, which largely took place during the 2023 Screen Actors Guild strike as actors were fighting for fair pay. However, other MCU movies that were impacted by factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic tended to post much better second-weekend drops, like 2021’s Black Widow, which only dropped 67.8%.
Note:
Black Widow was additionally impacted by the fact that it was released simultaneously in theaters and on the streaming service Disney+ with Premier Access.
