re: Are superhero movies finally wearing out their welcome?

quote:

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I think Infinity War and Endgame has warped people's minds a little bit. Those movies hitting 2 billion was a massive outlier. Most movies made about 600-900 million besides the large team-up films.

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You're mostly right, of course.

If we go by unadjusted worldwide gross/budget:

Endgame is the easiest winner, $2.8b/$400m - that was a 7:1 return

Infinity War was $2.0b/$400m so a 5:1

(OG) Avengers was $1.5b/$200m so a 7.5:1 return

Avengers AOU was $1.4b/$400m so a 3.5:1 return

Effectively the Avengers "quadrilogy" cost $1.4b to produce, figure another $1.7b to $2.0b "other" costs and returned $7.7b (a raw ratio of about 5.5:1) - so that made something like $4.25b in gross profits after production, marketing, etc. PLUS those movies (characters) sold a shite ton of merch.

Spiderman:NWH (NOT A MCU!) was $1.9b/$200m so a 9.5:1

(OG) Black Panther, Iron Man 3 and Civil War are roughly comparable, $200m to $250m films, returning $1.15b to $1.35b (with Civil War costing the most and returning the least of the 3) - these movies are clear profit makers, with ratios of 6 or 6.5:1 for IM3 and BP and 4.5:1 for CW.

It goes off the rails then with only Captain Marvel (with Endgame looming, as a reminder) crushing it (other than Spiderman: FFH, again, not MCU) with a 7.5:1 ratio and Dr. Strange:MoM pulling around a 5:1 ratio.

GOTG 2, BP:WF and Thor:Ragnarok were comparable performers, but WF cost $50m more than GOTG 2, which ate most of the profits (although it didn't lose money) and Thor:Ragnarok costing only $180m so that helped its bottom line.

When the budgets for these things were in the $150m to $175m range, they could get by grossing $600m to $750m. Financially it doesn't make sense to make one of these at $200m or $250m if it isn't going to make a billion. Too much risk and too little reward.

There will not be hype for another Endgame without all the necessary groundwork being done. They are unwilling to do the groundwork.