From worse to worse. 2023 started dragging ticket sales with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (60%) , then it got very rough and, from title to title, with the only exceptions being Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ( 92%) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (85%), became increasingly worrying. The last release of the year has been even more disastrous: Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom (42%) earned even less money than The Marvels (52%) , the worst historical failure of that studio in its 15-year history.
How much money did Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom make during its release at the box office?
According to Box Office Mojo , Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom made US$40 million in the United States during its release while The Marvels grossed $47 million in the same territory. The King of Atlantis came out a little better in global numbers because with that little push, it reached US $120 million while the three luminous heroines with which the House of Ideas closed its year stood at just $110 million.
Although to be fair, expectations were a little higher for Jason Momoa ‘s character . From the outset, unlike Captain Marvel and company, the film enjoyed being released on a long and festive weekend. But even then he failed to seduce the public to the movie theaters. In fact, quite the opposite, Japanese cinema gained attention, particularly in the United States, with Godzilla: Minus One (90%) and El Niño y La Garza (100%) , which have exceeded expectations in that market lacking habit of seeing international works.
To what can we attribute this titanic failure? Although it is not DC’s worst, it was still above the US $30 million of Shazam! The Fury of the Gods (55%) , the premiere was undoubtedly the final nail in the coffin of the now defunct DCEU. Could it be that the public does not see interest in a continuity without a future? We won’t really be able to give that answer until we see what numbers Superman: Legacy produces , a project with which James Gunn plans to start another almost entirely new franchise.
2024 will be a year of introspection for DC and Marvel as both have only one title scheduled for release in theaters: Joker: Folie a Deux and Deadpool 3 , respectively. Although these are very different feature films, and with quite a distance from previous installments of each franchise, the executives will surely be very attentive to them to see how they can do in the future to avoid the very low numbers that 2023 gave them.
However, television will be another place to experiment for DC and Marvel. The first will see, at the beginning of the year, the animated series Creature Commandos , another Gunn creation that will already be part of the new DCU, while Marvel will venture into its first major rating show with Echo in the first week of January. Although neither of them brings much momentum among the public, perhaps the lack of expectations helps them a little to surprise.
We can only hope that 2024 brings more decent proposals, and with polished effects, to compensate for the damage that the last twelve months did to this genre in the eyes of the public. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (42%)is already in theaters and so will be, starting this week, The Boy and the Heron and Godzilla: Minus One .
