Marvel Losing Around $50M On “Thunderbolts”

Despite the glowing reviews and good word of mouth, Marvel Studios’ “Thunderbolts” looks to have lost tens of millions for the studio at the box-office.

Variety reports that the studio needed the film to gross around $425 million worldwide to be considered breaking even. To date, with the film’s run effectively over in almost every market, its gross hovers at $377 million – meaning losses are around $50 million.

That’s one of the lowest-grossing installments in all of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe and an unfortunate result for a film Disney CEO Bob Iger touted as the “first and best” example of Marvel’s new movie strategy.

Prior to the pandemic, nineteen of the MCU’s twenty-two films hit at least $500 million globally. Since 2020, only six of the thirteen films have done so.

Whereas “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “The Marvels” and “Captain America: Brave New World” all had bad or tepid word-of-mouth, this one did not but at least it was cost efficient to make by Marvel standards – $180 million to produce and $100 million to market.

It leads to the obvious question of Marvel being able to deliver more films focused on minor or obscure characters (ala “Guardians of the Galaxy”), or if it’s going to have to stick to its marquee faces.

Marvel will be doing the latter with the upcoming line-up including “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” two “Avengers” films, “Spider-Man 4,” “Black Panther 3,” and “X-Men”. Even a minor character like “Blade” is at least a well-known character.

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