Thunderbolts

They are losing whatever game they are playing. Sorting by opening weekend, Thunderbolts is ranked 30th. As John Doe once said: What are they doing? Biding their time, toying with us?

Clearly, audiences appear to be all tuckered out when it comes to the super hero genre. I plan on seeing Thunderbolts when it hits streaming, and like I said it seems to be getting reviewed well across the board, but I don't think audiences are as willing to take a shot on lesser known characters at this point. People came out for Deadpool and Wolvie, so maybe Marvel should crank up the X-Men engine before it's too late; their plan to fast track the low rent Avengers team seems doomed to fail.

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That does seem to be the conventional wisdom, yet oddly enough, it’s also the best-performing genre so far this decade, and by a wide margin.

It looks like the New Avengers billboard has been destroyed by Stitch!!

There was an East Coast division (based in New York) and a West Coast division (based in California) in the comics. At the end of Thunderbolts, the "New Avengers" have taken-up residence in New York, so perhaps the other Avengers will work out of California (like Tony Stark's old property in Malibu?) Of course, If they do spin it this way, the teams will be very different (Iron Man is dead, for example). Just a guess.

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Boldly going.

Have you seen Thunderbolts* yet? Because the post-credit scene gives what I believe to be a pretty good idea of where everything’s probably headed.

While this might be true... it's the top performing franchise, sure... because it's lost less than the others.

... I mean, the MCU is firing out at least 2 movies a year, with dozens of TV shows...

... but I wouldn't say that making a loss on every movie, or at absolute best just breaking even, when the only other franchises it's up against are Star Wars, Alien, Jurassic, James Bond and Predator, makes it actually successful.

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I want to make sure we aren’t just conflating different things. One is your personal dislike of the franchise, then there’s popularity, and then there’s profitability.

As for your personal dislike of the movies, I totally respect that you don’t like them and I definitely do not urge you to give them another try or anything.

In terms of profitability, well, I’m no accountant, but why on Earth would they keep making them if they weren’t insanely profitable? There would be absolutely no business case for making more if they didn’t expect to make a profit. Not only are they not about to stop, they are absolutely doubling down, with 2 super expensive Avengers movies now in the pipeline, and Kevin Feige saying publicly that they already have plans for the next 10 years of MCU movies. That’s not a pipe dream, it’s a business plan by a man who has already turned Marvel Studios into a franchise that’s made over $30 billion dollars at the box-office so far (and heavens only knows how much from merchandising)

Then there’s the popularity. Add up the box-office for all of the MCU movies of the 2020s, and you get (IIRC) well over $10 billion in total - way more than any other movie franchise in the same span of time. That means moviegoers around the world have spent more of their hard-earned money on MCU movies than on any other franchise.

So, even if they haven’t released an official* Avengers movie since 2019, the franchise remains more popular at the box-office than any other…

Anyway, I think it’s clear that these movies still bring in a substantial amount of money and the industry badly needs all the help it can get, because the total box-office still hasn’t recovered to pre-2020 levels, and a lot of theater chains are hurting.

I like the movies.
Well, between 08 and 2019 that is


I can't understand it either.
I mean, The Marvels alone lost close to 250m dollar... a quarter of a billion.
Eternals I heard bombed a half billion
Shang Chi I think only just about broke even.
I think Black Widow lost about 200m or so?
Thor Love And Thunder just about broke even, maybe a loss of around 50m
Ant Man And The Wasp Quantumania lost around 200m
Guardians 3 made a little, but not much
Brave New World lost around 200m

Thunderbolts with its 300m budget (including marketing) and has brought in just over 80m so far.

And that ^^ is 9 movies of the past 13 or so they've released.

So yeah, I don't get it either as to why they keep making them.

I don't know where you're getting your figures, but they totally sound completely made up.

All but maybe one of the recent movies already broke even. And all of these movies continue to generate profit well after they break even, for decades.

And that's not counting the money that comes from merchandising in general, and especially the merchandise sold at theme parks, which from what I hear is even more profitable for them (they get to cut out the middleman).

You’re right. MARVEL is diluting itself with all these extraneous projects, except for Daredevil That gets a pass.

Spider-Man, X-Men, Avengers (Thor, Cap, Hulk, Iron Man), Daredevil, and hopefully / if Fantastic Four crushes it should be their only vehicles. All the rest of their projects should be tanked.

With that strategy we would never have gotten some of the best characters they have brought to the screen, like the Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man.

What a great design by George Perez!

P.S. Another sad addendum - in searching for an image, I also just learned that the MCU both race and gender swapped Taskmaster a while back. So "he's" not that same great character that David Michelinie and artist George Pérez created as a villain for the Avengers, but just another character Disney/Marvel decided to go woke with. *sigh*

I think the MCU Taskmaster was just perfect, she really deserves to come back for more projects… maybe?

They would be a worthy sacrifice, Dr Strange movies too, if everything not mentioned wasn’t made.
I get it, some of it’s entertaining, but like Disney did when they bought Star Wars it’s non-Stop. Ask Mr. T what oversaturation does for a career

Yeah I think she’s a handicapped and muted Russians girl who was victimized by her father, so they got all the demographics built into her “story”

Not that I’m laughing at mutes or handicaps

She’s definitely not mute, she had lines in both movies.

And she’s also an incredibly skilled combatant, so I don’t see what the handicap would be?

The MCU's Taskmaster's slogan should be...
"Any Demographics Disney can appease, I can appease BETTER!"

Taskmaster doesn’t get enough love…



…I’ll take MCU Taskmaster over any other version any day of the week and twice on Sunday

Yeah but didn't you say you never read the comics? (I know you said that about Fantastic Four). So, if you never saw Taskmaster's first appearance in comics how do you know you'd take the MCU's (race & gender swapped) version over the original version that warranted putting the character in movies?

Because Olga, that’s why