The Marvels might be the worst film the MCU had, because even the third Ant-Man film managed to sneak out a profit despite being a flop.
Post Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios seemed to have faltered a little bit when it came to expanding the universe that it had set. With films like Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, The Marvels, and Thor: Love and Thunder, there has been a serious drop in quality in the products that Marvel has been putting out post-Phase 3.
Despite crashing and burning at the Box Office, Disney’s filings indicate Ant-Man 3 made a profit of ~$88,000
As reported by Forbes, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania actually ended up being a profitable venture for Disney, despite losing a lot of money at the box office. The film managed to gross a meager $467. 07 million, of which Disney would take half. This made Disney’s total revenue about 92.05 million short of what it spent on Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. However, as per filings from the company, the film was actually a profitable venture for the House of Mouse.
This comes courtesy of the fact that Disney as a company, or any other production house working in the UK, receives about 25.5% reimbursement of the total amount that has been spent in the country. This amount, when it came to the production of Quantumania, was about $58, 281, 661. Now, this plays into how studios actually get their projects off the ground. The US company, when making a film in the UK, sets up a separate company, to which it gives 74.5% of the production budget, while the remaining 25.5% is given as a loan.
Given that the latter half cannot be shown as revenue, since it has to be returned, The actual money that the company can show as revenue is the amount it received before the loan. Such financial gymnastics usually leaves the UK company with a small profit, which, given that it was set up for the production of the film alone, is absorbed into what the parent company ends up holding.
The Marvels probably won’t be able to make its money back even with a tax return
Despite the film being a well-rounded story, Brie Larson‘s The Marvels just did not resonate with the core fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film did not even break even at the box office, which was largely blamed on the lack of marketing from the actors, who could not be on press junkets thanks to the writer’s and actors’ strikes. By the time the strikes ended, the film was already in theatres, which means that the cast really could not do a lot of press for the film.
Further, the issues were further complicated by fans who did not like the film, causing them to discourage casual viewers from going to watch the films in theatres as well. This caused The Marvels to be billed as the first proper failure of the MCU, which not only shut down any prospects of future Captain Marvel projects, However, that does not seem to have deterred Marvel from using the character, given that there have been rumors that Captain Marvel will be at the center of the upcoming Avengers films.
