Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has come to a close with Ironheart. How did it do?
Let’s just say Iron Man isn’t the only thing buried.
On the surface, its numbers don’t look terrible: $1.5 billion spent, $3.66 billion earned. But when you dig into the individual titles, it’s clear — this phase was dominated by flops.
Of the six movies in this phase, only “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” made a profit. Both films made close to $1 billion and helped offset losses from “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “The Marvels” (the MCU’s biggest loser this phase), “Thunderbolts*,” and “Captain America: Brave New World.” Most of these films couldn’t save themselves, let alone the universe.
What sunk most of those films was their inflated budgets — only “Thunderbolts*” had a reported price tag under $200 million and it’s rumored that “The Marvels” and “Ant-Man 3” cost over $300 million a piece. Because advertising budgets — which are not publicly disclosed — are typically equal to a film’s production budget, this means that films usually have to double their money to break even. When a budget crosses the $200 million line, that often means that these flicks need to make at least $500 million to make money.
That’s not obtainable. There is an appetite for these films, but their ceiling usually rests at the $400 million mark.
How did its shows do?
Of the six live-action Disney+ series, only Loki Season 2 was an outright win. The jury is still out for Ironheart. But the rest? Echo and Secret Invasion were duds of cosmic proportions, drawing neither praise nor viewers. Agatha All Along and Daredevil: Born Again earned critical praise, but were sunk by low viewership.
What happened? Superhero fatigue and viewers lost trust in the Marvel name.
In 2019, the MCU could do no wrong. Its primary focus was on its films, which were well constructed and easy to follow. Then it flooded the zone with its Disney+ shows.
At first, this was a brilliant pivot. “WandaVision” and “Loki” came out when people were wary to return to movie theaters because of the pandemic, and they helped cement Disney+ as a legitimate streaming platform. But then came the garbage.
“Ms. Marvel” and “She-Hulk” were the first warning signs, though the latter obtained strong viewership.
“Secret Invasion” killed my interest in these shows. It squanders legacy characters like Nick Fury (Sam Jackson) and Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and has some of the worst scripts in the entire franchise. You’re better off burning your TV than watching this show.
That lack of quality control bled into its films. “Ant-Man 3” is a horrible misstep and “Captain America” 4 is borderline unwatchable. MCU’s Phase Four had its share of disappointments too — “Eternals” and “Shang-Chi” both lost money — but its success (“Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” etc.) drown them out, as that phase grossed over $5 billion with an almost identical total cost (for its films) to Phase 5.
The MCU should be in panic mode. The next generation of heroes its tried to establish in Phase 5 failed to resonate, and if “Fantastic Four” and “Avengers: Doomsday” bomb at the box office, it’s over. Marvel chief Kevin Feige will be out and Disney will scramble to salvage anything they can.
MCU Phase 5 is the lowest point Marvel has been since it had to sell off the film rights to its characters piecemeal in order to stay afloat in the 1990s.
It has everything it needs to succeed, but it must stop rushing projects into production that don’t have a script and have little hope of taking off. It must stop greenlighting projects that bleed money that no one wants to see.
It’s built one of the most sophisticated studio systems in Hollywood and its films have been a critical lifeline for movie theaters. But its cinematic universe is no longer expanding — it’s imploding.
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