Image: Deadpool & Wolverine, Walt Disney Studios
For the last 20 years, the MCU has been the juggernaut of the box office, with a net global box office collection of $30.8bn, making it the highest grossing film franchise of all time. Despite this, there has been an obvious fall in the demand for MCU projects which could be due to what many define as superhero fatigue as a result of oversaturation of the market. For a while, after the release of the era-concluding film Avengers: Endgame, the future of the MCU seemed uncertain with miss after miss at the box office.
However, in recent weeks, the demand for MCU projects has risen and with the reveals made at San Diego Comic Con, excitement around the franchise has returned.
In the last month, within the top ten most in-demand movies worldwide, 50% are films produced by Marvel, with only one of those films actually released in 2024. Considering the rest of the top ten were films released in 2024, this is an exceptional response to the release of a new film in the franchise.
Deadpool and Wolverine made an astounding $211mn in its domestic debut to rank as the sixth-biggest opening weekend of all time which is unbelievable for a film in a franchise that had seen a general decline in demand over the past few years. Not only did this film spike in demand immediately with a peak of 165.5x the average demand, it also catalyzed the spike in demand for other films in the Deadpool franchise which was to be expected but to this extent is impressive. As a particular outlier, Deadpool draws audiences from outside the MCU, which could explain the exceptional demand for the series over the last month.
What is even more impressive is the spike in demand for Avengers Endgame and Spiderman: No Way Home, which could be partly due to the attention that Deadpool and Wolverine has drawn to the franchise; but could also be a result of the San Diego announcements. Marvel studios released trailers for many upcoming projects including Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Avengers: Doomsday, and Avengers: Secret Wars. Alongside this, reveals about casting of new roles were also made (Robert Downey Jnr returning as the classic Fantastic Four character Doctor Doom), which could definitely have led to an increase in the excitement around the franchise and spurred fans to revisit the older MCU films.
As seen in the above time shift, over the last year, the last five MCU projects have had mixed reviews. As seen in the trends, Deadpool and Wolverine is performing exceptionally well amongst audiences and looks to continue on this path. This is not surprising due to the success of the previous Deadpool films, but the general decline of the demand for Marvel projects was expected to have an effect on the film. This seemingly hasn’t been the case and the film went so far as to even surpass the success of its predecessors at the box office. This is a strong indicator that there is still audience demand for Marvel projects waiting to be tapped into.
The Marvels saw a demand peak in November, around the release of the film but has struggled to maintain a particularly high demand for long afterwards but the general demand for these projects after their peaks seems to stabilize around 50x the average which is exceptional. There is still demand present for MCU movies, but for the last year, this average has dropped and is not as dominant in the movie world as it once was.
We performed an analysis of the audience composition for each film in the MCU from Iron Man to Deadpool and Wolverine and, as seen in the demographics skew above, the majority of the audience is male and younger. The skew is, however, closer to the Zennials generation which includes the age range of 25-31 years old. This is expected due to this generation growing up with the MCU, so the higher demand for projects will lie within this demographic.
It is likely that films like Deadpool do so well because the film content has grown with its audiences, like Amazon Prime’s The Boys and Invincible. Despite this, there is a clear demand for projects from the younger audiences and so the MCU must try to appeal to both. The MCU has lost much of its audience since its peak and Marvel must work hard to win them back but with the rise in demand (50% of the top ten movies produced by Marvel), the trends could indicate that the audiences are slowly returning.
In conclusion, there is still a demand for the MCU if beloved characters and stories are made with care. Audiences still clearly want to see their favorite characters on the big screen, and if Marvel can capitalize on the desires of their main audiences, the future of the MCU could be very bright.
