Everyone knows how much money Marvel makes from its movie series. In the MCU alone, they have pocketed 9 works with box office revenue exceeding 1 billion USD after more than a decade of operation. In particular, Avengers: Endgame once became the highest-grossing film of all time, earning nearly $2.8 billion (according to Box Office Mojo data) and only dropped to second place after Avatar re-released in some regions to increase its achievements. That is not to mention the works of other cinematic universes, but the most prominent is the Venom series that Sony is producing.
Because of the effects of the pandemic, the film market has faced many difficulties and has not been very active in the past 2 years. However, it is a very good opportunity for Marvel to step up and show its dominance at the box office in an unprecedented way in history.
Marvel has had a relatively successful year in the movie market.
According to statistics of The Wrap, Marvel’s superhero movies released in 2021 account for 30% of the total worldwide box office revenue. Contrary to 2020, when their entire activities were almost completely frozen, Marvel has released 5 different movies in 2021.
4 of them belong to the MCU, including Black Widow, Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and a work from Sony – Venom: Let There Be Carnage. These films brought in a total of $1.35 billion in the North American market, or nearly a third of the $4.45 billion box office total.
Particularly, Spider-Man: No Way Home, although just released on December 17, 2021, has so far pocketed nearly $1.4 billion, with nearly $632 million coming from the North American market, becoming The most popular movie in theaters since the outbreak of the pandemic.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is one of the most successful movie blockbusters of 2021, despite being released only nearly 3 weeks ago.
Looking at it from another perspective, there have been about 400 odd movies released in 2021, many times more than the number of films that Marvel can produce. But that only deepens their position and power. It is true that in the past, Marvel was inherently a formidable force in the world film market. However, the gap between superhero movies and other genres has only really gotten bigger in recent years. In 2018, Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War both made their names on the billion-dollar blockbuster list, accounting for about 18% of the domestic box office.
The positive side in this situation is that Marvel movies will help audiences have more motivation to return to theaters after a long time with home streaming services. That will partly help the American cinema in particular and the world in general recover from the devastation of the pandemic and adapt to the new normal.
However, this is very bad news for true standalone movies, not part of a major franchise. A lot of high-quality work from big names like Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley or Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel have all been unfortunate hits. Warner Bros.’s strategy of parallel release both in theaters and on HBO Max. is clearly not helpful in boosting studio sales of such works. That is probably why they canceled this plan in 2022.
The success of Marvel is making the gap between superhero movies and other movie genres even bigger.
Audiences have the right to hope for a more prosperous film market in 2022, with a larger and more diverse number of films. However, do not be too surprised when Marvel continues to maintain its dominant position. Currently, they are holding very strong cards like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and even Sony’s Morbius.
According to SlashFilm
.