27.2 billion is the total box office for Marvel movies.

28 movies, with an average return of 971 million dollars for global box office.
203 million per movie being the average budget.

The Marvel movies started in 2008 with Iron Man, which began phase one for Marvel.

14 years later, Marvel has Black Panther 2 coming out in November, which will be the end of phase four.

Here’s where they each phase stacked up at the box office.

Marvel Phase One

2008-2012
3.8 billion made
Six movies
631 million dollars on average.

Marvel Phase Two

2013-2015
5.2 billion made
Six movies
874 million dollars on average.

Marvel Phase Three

2016-2019
13.3 billion made
11 movies
1.2 billion dollars on average.

Marvel Phase Four

2020-2023
4.6 billion made so far, with Thor having 2-400 million left to make and Black Panther 2, which is very likely to break a billion.
Six movies so far.
778 million is the current average.

What does this mean?

For about two years, people have said Marvel is in a decline post 2019, where the running story ended with Avengers Endgame and nobody is 100% clear on the next plan.

There have also been some issues financially.

Black Widow made only 370 million, on a budget of 200 million. It was dual released on Disney+, which ended up as a PR nightmare, where Scarlett Johansson sued Disney, had support from cast members and the Avengers directors said they’d not sign on again until resolved.

They had a visible issue from COVID, where movies globally were down in 2021 and still lagging in 2022.

They also had the failure of Eternals, which despite an A list cast, it didn’t perform well and lost millions. Shang Chi being the film that came out a couple months earlier in 2021 and while that did better, it was still marked as a break even.

The only reason the average is currently higher over the phase one average was Spider-Man No Way Home, but Marvel which is owned by Disney had to split that with Sony, who owns Spider-Man.

The big question is this.

What’s wrong, if anything?

Have some thoughts on that and think it comes to the following.

Number One-Disney+

Disney’s biggest project as a brand is Disney+ and the goal of getting a streaming service which will surpass Netflix.

They’ve pretty much done that.

Launched in November, 2019.

Today, almost 140 million subscribers and very likely to surpass Netflix in 2023.

The big reason for that was taking titles that’d likely be Marvel movies and instead making them Disney+ series instead, which is why phase four will only have seven movies, down from phase three at eleven.

The shows being.

WandaVision
Falcon & Winter Soldier
Loki
Marvel What If
Hawkeye
Moon Knight
Ms Marvel

They changed models heavily, from just focusing on film, with shows as a minor sub business, to series getting just as many titles as movies and arguably better content.

The only two shows here which probably wouldn’t have been movies are Ms Marvel and What If, due to Ms Marvel being a lower name ID hero and What If being a cartoon.

WandaVision, Falcon, Loki and Hawkeye all took characters previously in the movies and gave them shows. Moon Knight also had Oscar Issac, who is a B+ name actor and Moon Knight, which was a modestly named comic series.

This emphasis on Disney+ brings in problem number two.

Number Two-Lower name ID movies

Eternals and Shang Chi were movies released in 2021, where they were extremely low name ID comics.

Both were series that never had long or high selling runs and even huge comic fans I knew never heard of them.

Another issue being that on surface, they didn’t really feel like comic book movies.

No costumes
No notable powers
Characters with names over hero names.

They were harder characters to market, both of those films would have likely made more sense to do Disney+ shows on and flopped.

Marvel was so focused on Disney+, they didn’t do movies for likely higher earning characters, such as Hawkeye and Loki.

There’s also the case that Black Widow failed, but that was the first film after COVID, made over 100 million on Disney+ orders, had a huge piracy problem and still was more profitable due to Disney+ added charges over Shang Chi and Eternals.

This is probably the biggest reason why the movies struggled to return.

Number Three-No endgame

When Iron Man came out, there was the moment Samuel L Jackson came on screen, said he was Nick Fury, said he was forming a team and everyone who followed comics knew there’d be an Avengers movie.

After that happened, there was a clear path for phase one, phase two and phase three, where people knew to watch every movie and it’ll lead to an Avengers movie to close that chapter.

This time, it ends with Black Panther, which while I hope is good, it really isn’t a conclusion to a running story and unlikely to unite any of the storylines shown on Disney+ or in theaters.

This likely is making fans less invested, where they can’t seem to connect the dots.

The other issue is having Disney+ makes this a lot harder.

I am a casual fan, watching only WandaVision, not any of the other shows and I really have no idea what happened, besides them existing.

Nothing against them, but I think like most people who enjoy Marvel as popcorn movies, I don’t see them as worth watching 6-8 hour long episodes weekly.

This hurts Marvel, because it makes it harder for people to know what happened in future movies and an eventual endgame for stories.

If they early on announced there’d be some movie or show to put the pieces together, there might have been a stronger performance for something like Eternals.

Final thoughts

Marvel is doing just fine and clearly those shows helped grow Disney+ to a point it’s going to be the most profitable division of Disney.

That said though, it won’t make as much as phase three for the box office, possibly not as much as phase two and factoring in increased budgets, it’ll likely be less profitable than phase one.

Very likely this had some issues with COVID, but also could be an example of where companies or brands fall doing too much at once.

Marvel going past movies and into shows with Disney+ may have distracted a bit from the core product.