THE MARVELS opening | JOURNEY TO BETHLEHEM opening | November 10 to 12, 2023 weekend
THE MARVELS opening | JOURNEY TO BETHLEHEM opening | November 10 to 12, 2023 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: November 10 to 12, 2023
1) The Marvels opening
- This opening is an unprecedented Marvel box office collapse. On average, superhero episode 2s come back strong, opening +12% higher than the 1st episode. This weekend is an est. -67% below Capt. Marvel's start. The strikes hurt the film's marketing, but that's not what's driving these numbers.
This is the third superhero series featuring a heroine that's fallen apart after a big launch. Suicide Squad/Harley Quinn and Wonder Woman 2 crashed as well. Female-powered entertainment is enjoying extraordinary success right now, but audiences are not embracing these stories:
- Since the pandemic, superhero films have endured simultaneous streaming, creative experiments, management upheaval at DC Comics, unimaginative and bad movies, saturation on TV, and the deterioration of the Chinese market for all American films. Over the last three and a half years, the growth of the genre has stopped.
There have been strong sequels, including Spider-Man 8 ($1.9b worldwide), Dr. Strange 2 ($956m), and Black Panther 2 ($859m). And Marvel had a good summer, with Guardians of the Galaxy 3 ($846m, down only -2% from Guardians 2), and Across the Spider-Verse 2 ($690m, up +84% from Spider-Verse 1). But we haven't had a successful new character and series in four years. Capt. Marvel was the biggest, most recent new character, and it’s not making it.
- Marvel is launching three new storylines during the next 18 months: Madame Webb (Feb 14), Kraven the Hunter (Aug 30), and Thunderbolts (Jul 25, 2025). Those three pictures will determine whether the genre has traction left, or is in a long-term, sustained decline. If the genre does not refresh itself with original stories and characters, then it’s in decline.
2) Journey to Bethlehem opening
- This is a musical version of the Nativity Story (Mary+Joseph=Jesus), mixing classic Christmas and contemporary pop songs. It’s produced, written and directed by Adam Anders, a Swedish music talent who earned multiple awards for his work on the television show Glee. This is a weak opening for an inspirational musical drama.
Music generally lifts these movies at the box office, and reviews are very good, but it's not enough for this title:
Overall
- The movie business has been beaten up twice — the pandemic and the strikes. This weekend captures the industry’s fatigue: what should be a powerful Marvel sequel is going to pass quietly, with little energy or excitement.
Nothing about moviegoing is settled right now, not in production, distribution, or marketing. With the strikes over, scheduling bottlenecks and delays are coming. It’s going to take time to rebuild, again.