Marvel Made $32B？! The “Dying Marvel” Narrative is Fake News - Error Code Show

0:00 We've had a lot of folks all over the internet be like, Marvel is failing, Marvel is failing, and Marvel, oh, it's there, there, there. The thing about us fans is first off, we have weird short -term memory and we also have some weird Mandela effects that kind of happen with us. And so I want to talk about the business of the MCU as a franchise and what they really did. And because I'm a big nerd, I made a big spreadsheet, okay, yesterday. Why? Because I'm a nerd. Okay. So we're going to talk about this for a second, but just to kind of demonstrate my point, right? I'm going to bring up a movie, a couple of movies and nobody, no looking it up. All right. Okay.

0:48 But what I want to bring up is a couple of points and Jay, without looking it up, how much move money, right? Did Captain America, the first Avenger, you remember Captain America, the first Avenger. That was a great movie. Right. It's great. Yeah. How much did it do at the box office? Oh, God, what year did that come out? Box office. 2010. Oh, God, I don't know. 2010. OK, so that was early. That was that was definitely early. I'm going to say. I feel like it's going to be a very low number. I'm going to say 80. I'm going to say 80 million. OK, you're way off there.

1:31 Right. But it did it did three hundred and seventy million and some change. Right. OK. Which was way less than Iron Man. Way less than stuff. Yeah. Chat was like five hundred billion. Nope. Three hundred and seventy, which, by the way, is less than Captain America, Brave New World or the Thunderbolts made in the box office. Right. It made less money than Thunderbolts did or Cap four. Okay, this is why I say if I would have said to you what made more money Captain America first Avenger or Captain America brave new world. What is your instinct? Say Captain America brave new world. Yeah, how much money did Captain Marvel make everybody wants to say Captain Marvel was a big old flop How much money did Captain Marvel make in the box office? Absolutely I I thought it was a flop. Everyone was mad. They're like, oh, we have a female superhero. Females can't be superheroes. Oh, this is so mad where it's woke. How much did Captain Marvel make at the box office? Well, now I now I'm worried about my numbers. Four hundred million. One point one billion dollars. Oh, wow. That is actually really surprising. OK, Captain Marvel. made $1 .1 billion in the box office. We don't remember. So now we're going to bring up my cool, cool spreadsheet.

3:00 And we're going to look at the MCU phase by phase real quick. And what I did is I tallied every box office that has been done by phase. And how much money Marvel averaged per film by phase. We're going to talk about this real quick, okay? Phase one, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, and the Avengers to close out phase one, right? Incredible Hulk, not necessarily a flop per se, okay? Because the budget wasn't that high. Not huge they averaged 635 million per movie most of that dragged up by the 1 .5 billion that the Avengers made Okay Phase two it gets higher. We got Iron Man 3 Thor the Dark World, right? Captain America Winter Soldier Guardians of the Galaxy Avengers Age of Ultron and Ant -Man. Okay, and with it with phase two, they average 878 million eight almost eight hundred seventy nine million per flick okay now we keep going phase three this is where marvel hits its stride and this is where i think the mandela effect comes into play okay because phase three was banger after banger after banger after banger cap civil war dr strange guardians 2 spider -man homecoming thor ragnarok black

4:31 panther uh Avengers Infinity War, Ant -Man of the Wasp, Captain Marvel, Avengers Endgame, Spider -Man Far From Home. That was, that was phase three. Right? And they just blew it up. Okay? They just, it was huge. Huge. Okay? Because you had, what, six movies in phase three that did more than a billion dollars. Including Captain Marvel. Right? Phase four, they take, now here's the thing, and this is the thing that I want people to think about for the business of this thing. You weren't going to redo phase three in phase four, okay? Like you hit such a stride in phase three that anything was going to be a letdown after phase four, or after phase three.

5:22 It just was. So you had Black Widow, Shang -Chi, Eternals, which I think Marvel really counts as its first financial flop because the budget was massive. on the Eternals and it did not do well in the box office. Only $402 million. Spider -Man, No Way Home, Doctor Strange, Will 2 vs. Madness, Thor, Love and Thunder, Black Panther, Wakanda Forever. That's all your Phase Four movies. $815 million per film. Okay. And then we get into Phase Five, which is the one that everybody kind of bluzz on, right? Ant -Man and the Wasp, Quantum Media, Guardians 3, Right? The Marvels, which did flop, it was their second real flop.

6:03 Deadpool and Wolverine, Captain America Brave New World, and Thunderbolts. They're still averaging in that phase $610 million per film. Right? That's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. Is it a step down? Absolutely. Is Marvel worried about it? No. No, they're not. Not really. And now you've got the start of phase six, which started with Fantastic Four New Steps. I have got this highlighted at 491 million because it's not out of theaters yet, right? So as of yesterday, it was at 491 million, 904, 286. I think it's going to break 500, right? By the time it leaves this theatrical run. Yeah. So. For every film that they have made, they have gotten a total box office of $32 ,475 ,550 ,762 in 37 movies. $32 billion. That is an average of $877 ,717 ,588 per movie. Which brings me to kind of my greater point, okay Which is this Marvel is arguably

7:33 the most successful film franchise that's ever been done There are 37 movies in and they've made 32 billion dollars, right? No, but I I cannot think of a scenario of anybody who's going to make that kind of a franchise run that Kevin Feige did and is still doing right like it's just it's not that now before chat hits me because i knew i knew somebody chat was going to go what about star wars okay star wars is the movie That Star Wars is the franchise that you could argue Has done better financially, right? Looking at the 11 wide release Star Wars movies that have been released. They've there's 11 movies They've grossed ten point three billion dollars for an average of nine hundred and forty million per movie Okay You can make an argument for Star Wars right but but You can make an argument for Star Wars But they don't have the track run of 37 films that Marvel has and Star Wars has been around since 1977 the MCU started 2008 Okay in 17 years. They've made 32 billion dollars. So

9:04 what's that about 1 .8 billion a year in revenue? So so that's where where I want to kick it over to you Jay, right? And ask, when I break it down this way, and based on kind of a lot of the commentary we've heard and things like that, what does this make you think about this? As far as franchises go, putting your MBA, working on MBA hat on. Well, I would say, I think it would be Oh, I think it'd be a little unfair only to look at movies because I will say I do remember Star Wars when I was a kid and Episode 1 2 3 came out There was so much merch that came along with it like Star Wars Pepsi cans. That's people still have by the way Star Wars everything So much Star Wars So I think Star Wars also brought in a lot of merch. Star Wars also has this like never ending spinoff TV series going on right now, both animated and live action. Looking just at movies, I would say Star Wars should be doing

10:36 better. With less movies, because. They did start in nineteen seventy seven. And what you're going to run into is now you're going to have parents taking their children to go see Star Wars. So you have that kind of already that like nostalgic like, oh, like I grew up watching Star Wars. I want to take my kids to watch Star Wars. Marvel coming out. What? 2010, you said. Don't super have that or it's not. Well established yet. I would say I'm here soon. I think it'll start kicking in but Yeah, um, that's my thought, okay So I'm going to address a couple of things in the chat really quick. People who are asking questions that are tangential to this. All right, Superman, which again has not finished this theatrical run. You can still see it in theaters. As of today is at six hundred and six million six fifty eight seven ninety two worldwide. So it's well into profitability. It's 60 million over where it needed to be profitability wise. I think we talked about that a couple of weeks ago. It's doing fine for a brand new DCU where the DCEU ran the franchise into the fucking dirt, right?

11:59 And you've got to build back a lot of goodwill from the audience. Superman did better than it needed to to do that. It's a very good start for the DCU. Very good start. to answer another question. People are talking about adjusting for inflation. I used to think of it that way. And then I hit again. I talk about this podcast a lot. Mr. John Campia, he does a really good editorial on why he doesn't use adjusted for inflation. And I agree with it. Right. So for the longer version of what I'm about to say, go watch his editorial on this. But the fact of the matter is, is the reason it's hard to do adjust for inflation is this. If you look at adjusted for inflation, people talk about Gone with the Wind, right? Okay. How long was Gone with the Wind in theaters? Probably like 36 years, right? It was like the only movie.

12:57 Two and a half years. It was in theaters for two and a half years. Nothing's in theaters for two and a half years. Who knows how much money can be made? And what that brings about is this. At various iterations of time, Where people spent money and where people spent their entertainment hours varied heavily, okay? Movies now are not just competing with other movies. It's not like the 1990s when episode one came out where everybody had a smartphone in their pocket and they could spend their time watching Netflix, YouTube and not leave the fucking house, right? In a post COVID era with the cost of movie tickets these days and the number of tickets that are sold, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. trying to figure out all the various economic factors that go into should we adjust this for inflation? And again, if Gone With The Wind came out today, would it sell as many tickets as it did in the 1930s when it came out? And I have to say the answer is probably no. Right. So that's why I, you know, using just the raw box office numbers is still probably just the best metric to use.

14:07 The other question is do they do well in the theater take the Star Wars sequels because everyone goes to a movie like that hoping to do something good So here's the thing and this is you could pretty well bear this out If people don't like a movie, they don't go back and movies people don't go back to don't make billions Right. You can say rightfully that the the fandom as we move through the sequel trilogy It lost steam. Force Awakens did two billion plus. Episode eight only did one point three billion. Episode nine only did a billion. And so they went down as it went. So. Again, it's Star Wars, so everybody's going to it's cultural. Everyone's going to see it, but you see it with episode seven. Everybody went back and back and back and back and back to see episode seven Whereas you didn't get that kind of run back with episode eight and nine It was one of those were just everybody fucking saw it. So that's that's where I would break that down There's also yes somebody else brought this in there's a fewer second -run theaters I don't know if you remember this when you were a kid Jay But I know I know it was a thing when I was a kid where you had primary run theaters where they did their first part of their theatrical run and then second run theaters where After they left the primary there was still time to go see them in theaters a kind of budget theaters,

15:39 right? Those don't really exist anymore. They're gone. Those businesses just don't happen Well, it also just doesn't make sense because now we Now you can get movies to streaming services as well as out on blu -ray or whatever a lot quicker than those if that's why that kind of the cheaper Market kind of for moviegoers kind of existed because there is such a long period before they would come out on VHS six months on average And that's the other thing is a lot of the the movie studios and now Disney I think has learned from this you'll saw it last year, right? Where they started extending their theatrical runs again and going look we're not putting this on Disney plus Thunderbolts just got to Disney plus I think this week right and They have really extended their theatrical windows and I think that that's good because a lot of the studios have trained the audience Eh, I'll just wait until it comes to streaming in two months, which I think is one of the reasons why the raw number of tickets go down, right? And yeah, movie theaters these days are a real hard proposition when the cost of tickets, half the cost of voting in the movie, I'd rather just wait and buy the movie.

17:06 And I think that that's a lot of people's attitude now. And I think that's why you're seeing certain movies flop, right? Where unless it's like an event movie, not as many people are going. Right. I've seen a lot of good movies in the in the theaters. We've talked about this much this year that were great movies that fucking nobody saw. That sucks. So but would you argue, do you think that what Feige has done with Marvel can be replicated? Can be replicated. Thirty seven movies averaging almost a billion dollars a movie, almost 900 million, let's be fair. I, I think it, I personally think it could, but I don't think anyone is going to have the drive to do it, to be honest, because to go through that many movies, I mean, keep in mind a lot of people like to kind of come in, get their success off of one project or maybe a couple of projects. They move on to something else. And you need some sort of consistency.

18:22 And I think that's kind of what DC has kind of really struggled with. But yeah, I think it could be done. I don't think anyone actually wants to put in the work to do it, though. That makes sense. It absolutely makes sense. And again, that's why, again, I could say you can arguably say that the MCU is the most the most successful franchise of all time. Right. It just is. And anybody who thinks that, you know, the other thing I wanted to break down on this, and this is, again, why I think it is. Let's look at what's coming. All right. Phase six. OK. We have Fantastic Four First Steps, which is out. Right. The next movie is Spider -Man Brand New Day. Does anybody think that movie is not going to make a billion dollars? Avengers Doomsday. So far, an Avengers movie has never not made a billion dollars. Marvel has a hold spot on a movie, on a film next July that nobody knows what it is. Nobody knows if it's a hold spot or what they're doing. I suspect it's Doctor Strange 3. Right. And it's going to come out between Doomsday and Secret Wars, much like Ant -Man and the Wasp came out between

19:54 Infinity War and Endgame and introduced the quantum tunnel and the quantum realm and all the shit they needed for for Endgame. I think it's I think it's the next Doctor Strange. But again, and do you think Avengers Secret Wars is not going to make a billion dollars? Okay They're gonna average more than a billion dollars in phase six per movie Okay, he's gonna be up right around 40 billion by the time he gets to the end of phase six So Yeah, anyway, let us know what you think in the comments below Do you think it's the most successful franchise of all time or what do you guys think? Let us know