How long can the MCU realistically continue making a profit?

How long can the MCU realistically continue making a profit?

Are there Phase 3 movies that look iffy?

What's in the horizon beyond Phase 3?

Could animated movies under the Marvel Studios brand be planned?

What are your thoughts?

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forbes.com/sites/csylt/2015/01/27/disney-reveals-guardians-of-the-galaxy-was-over-budget-at-232-million/)
bleedingcool.com/2016/08/08/the-standees-the-pins-the-exclusives-how-marvel-will-make-champions-1-comic-in-october/
pajiba.com/think_pieces/no-suicide-squad-doesnt-need-to-make-800-million-to-break-even-.php
forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2016/08/12/suicide-squad-dominates-despite-medias-gloom-and-doom/
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They've built a lot of goodwill from audiences and critics, they'll keep making profits for years to come. Not to mention the merchandising profits.

Like for ever.

They have a big enough roster to keep making new things, before they decide to reboot and cash in with a nostalgia reboot.

They will be profitable forever, they are little kids movies, and the world as a steady supply of little kids.

Animated movies? Well, Big Hero 5 is basically an animated Marvel Movie, if Lego Batman does well, I'm sure Marvel will take note.

they'll continue forever since they never have and never will make a bad movie

unlike DC/WB which will be dead by this time next year

You base this on what exactly? Do you know what the most popular Halloween costume was? I'll give you a hint: Not a Meme Clusterfuck Universe character.

Brah, Star Wars has been making mad dough for 40 years and isn't showing signs of slowing down, and it originally didn't have a hundredth of the Marvel lore depth.
The Simpsons are going into their 30th season.

If I were you I wouldn't hold my breath.

They'll totally keep this going after Phase 3. And even when they become increasingly stagnant, they'll follow other current movie trends and adapt the Marvel movies that way.

I honestly see no end in sight for the MCU.

As long as there are little children in the world and the Mosue controls most of the entertainment movie, kids will get hooked on Marvel movies.

>critical and financial bombs
>ga hates the dceu
>comic sales are back to normal shitty levels after the rebirth boost


>b-but hey, halloween costumes

Except most of the people watching Marvel movies these days don't give a fuck about comic book lore. I guarantee you 99% of the people who went to see Ant Man didn't even know he existed until the trailors for the movie. The MCU could be inventing heroes from scratch for all the general audience knows and they'd still go to see the movies at this point because it's a brand they can trust.

>Except most of the people watching Marvel movies these days don't give a fuck about comic book lore.


The lore, or aspects of it are used on the movies anyway.

>How long can the MCU realistically continue making a profit?
They essentially have to keep doing what they've been doing. Realistically, until we see audiences not see one of their movies and they still did their regular thing in it, then we might have a problem. As of now, I honestly believe that they could go way past Phase 4 with no problems

If you'd read the rest of my post you'd see it doesn't matter. The MCU could be making it all up as they go and it wouldn't matter at this point. They no longer have to rely on household names to bring people in at this point. They can make movies about Ant Man and Dr. Strange and whoever the fuck else and they will still make hundreds of millions of dollars because they've turned the name "Marvel" into a trusted brand for moviegoers. I predict in our lifetime we will see MCU-original characters getting movies before they eventually get comic book adaptations. This might be the straw that breaks the camel's back or it might collapse well before then, who knows.

I wasn't trying to make the point that it pleases audiences, but that there's a lot that can be explored and is basically designed to be. Contrary to SW where they basically made everything on the spot as it was going after the OT.

>Except most of the people watching Marvel movies these days don't give a fuck about comic book lore
I think what he means is that they have a lot they can use and explore that can grab audiences easily

See

they wanted Benedict Cumberbitch to take over for RDJ as the big draw but it didn't pan out enough.

Iron Man is holding the MCU hostage basically.

They never relied on household names, but they do rely on the existing lore to actually write the movies.
Stop missing the point.

Maybe OCs would be as successful, maybe not, but that's pure speculation.

only until he passes the torch in Spider-man Homecoming

>financial bombs
>comic sales back to shitty levels despite kicking the marvelous competition's ass
dohohoho

See another post of you missing the point?

denial won't help your case cuck

>They never relied on household names
You mean besides Hulk, Iron Man, and Captain America? Granted they were Spider-man or even X-men tier popularity but they all had a decent amount of TV and/or movie exposure prior to the MCU. I'm sure if they had the rights they would have started with Spider-man and X-men, but they didn't so they went to the next tier of popularity and it was a hit. Now they don't have to worry about how popular the characters are because it doesn't matter.

brah Star Wars hasn't put 2 movies out every year for 40 years.

Marvel's pushing two releases every year for the past 3 years, and will be doing at least 3 a year for the next 4 years.

to the literal who playing Spider-Man? HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>Spider-Man
>Being a big draw.

Spider-Man Homecoming is going to be fucking gay. Nobody will want anything to do with Spider-Man.

Spider-Man a shit and has been for years.

You seem to be the one missing the point. Lore doesn't matter. At all. They could have zero lore to work off of and it wouldn't matter they'd still be making bank.

I'm not the one in denial though :^)

Theyre good until after Infinity War wraps up, then things will be up for debate. Maybe they'll get some mileage out of Ghost Rider or perhaps Fantastic Four will return by that time

Not the guy you're talking to, but he's making an interesting point as well. You're right, and he's not contradicting your statement, he's just saying that to moviegoers who don't even know if Ant Man or Doc Strange are in comic books (seriously), they go to Marvel movies because they're Marvel movies. Marvel could just make up characters for the movies at this point and no one would give a shit, they'd still go see the movie.

>you're in denial
>NO YOU

ok cuck

>Now they don't have to worry about how popular the characters are because it doesn't matter.

Ant-Man made 200 million less profit than Suicide Squad, yet Suicide Squad is considered a flop and Ant-Man not.

Spider-man is literally Marvel's most famous hero. He's been on TV since the fucking 70s. The main issue is he's overexposed and doesn't have a big name playing him.

cuck pls

I think they'll go on for a long time, but to say Marvel has never made a bad movie is just dishonest. The Thors, the latter two Iron Mans, and Age of Ultron were pretty terrible.

Spiderman is still the most profitable superhero around, I don't see the issue here.

see same for DC. Joker was the only "known" character for Suicide Squad and it made more than most of the Marvel films have.

MCU will continue until virtual reality or some other entertainment form takes over people watching a 2ish hour film. So probably 20 years or so.

Let's see...
>>Guardians of the Galaxy 2
My most hyped film for next year. It'll do well.
>>Spider-Man Homecoming
Personally, I think it'll be boring, but apparently the internet is acting like it will be the biggest movie ever.
>>Thor Ragnarok
Love the director, though I'm expecting a hilarious but messy film
>>Black Panther
Hyped
>>Infinity Wars
Sure it'll be good
>>Ant-Man and Wasp
I liked the first one, so I'm game.
>>Captain Marvel
The biggest wildcard
>>Infinity Wars Part 2
See part 1.
>>Spider-Man 2
Hopefully they get Pete out of High School.

maybe for you and the people on Sup Forums but everyone else loves them

The fuck does that have to do with anything I said?

Look around the internet, and you'll see that people are over the fucking moon for Spider-Man. Even if the film sucks, it'll make a lot of money.

That's probably because SS marketing budget alone was bigger than the combined production and marketing budgets of Antman.

>Joker was the only "known" character for Suicide Squad
He's arguably the most famous comic book villain ever, having been portrayed in movies, television series, and cartoons for over half a century. Compared to that, most of the MCU's core characters had little real exposure prior to the 21st century. Oh sure Iron Man had his cartoon back in the 80s and Hulk had that shitty TV series, but what else? Who really even heard of Thor? Tons of people thought it was a movie about Norse paganism at first. I'm sure people had heard of Captain America but had they ever actually seen or read anything with him? I don't think so. Yet Captain America is now leading the MCU in profits (even if RDJ is still dominating the movies).

I'm not saying it won't at all, that would be retarded.

They need a new big draw a la RDJ Iron Man. Cumberbatch already failed, a literal who has no chance either. That's all I'm saying. RDJ has the MCU by the balls.

the previous comment to yours was saying that Marvel and DC differ by not relying on "household" names for their films.

Suicide Squad's only really known character was Joker (who is barely in the movie) and it outperformed most of the MCU to date.

but Marvel gets praised for its movies starring "obscure" characters, while DC doesn't.

I have not mentioned DC even once in this thread

Homecoming will be the Batman & Robin of Spider-Man movies and will succeed in killing the franchise. After that we can finally put that shit behind us.

Give it some time. Once kids grow up and know better, they'll drop Spider-Man like a bad habit.

I agree on the overexposed part, whoever is at Marvel and pushing for Spider-Man needs to fuck off.

I like how you're forgetting that Suicide Squad went unopposed the month of August, marketed the hell out of Harley, Smith, and Joker, and still couldnt be considered a hit in WBs eyes or the general audience.

Look if you're going to bait at least be creative about it

>Suicide Squad is considered a flop

It really isn't, unless you mean critically. It sure didn't deserve to do well but it did.

Yet Harley is more popular than any female member of the MCU.

>inb4 captain brie will overtake her
lmao

It's not bait, and that post more creative than Spider-Man Homecoming. They can't ride Spider-Man forever, and I can't wait for it to crash and burn.

I wouldn't say IM 3 was bad tho.
And surely not AoU. AoU was great, don't understand why people are still shitting on it.
Then again I never read these comics. Like 80-90% of their targeted audience.

They still have a boatload of IP's they can cash in on and/or make popular

>Ghost Rider
>Blade
>Ms. Marvel
>Moon Knight
>Gwenpool
>Turning Netflix IPs into movies
>Nova
>Thunderbolts
>Sentry
>She-Hulk
>Howard the Cuck
>Black Knight
>Hercules
>Elsa Bloodstone
>White Tiger

Age of Ultron has no correlation to the comics.

and its an okay movie. It just has some really bad moments that bring it down from being good, to just "okay"

>Ghost rider
>F4
>Any of these 'working'
Either you're baiting or you're that dumb, user.

IM3 is a very Shane Black movie, you either love it or hate it. Probably the most "controversial" film in the MCU, fans can never decide if it sucks or if it's great.

I don't know about AoU, I thought it was pretty disappointing. Certainly not the colossal disaster that Sup Forums is making it up to be, but I wouldn't call it very good either.

Yes, because nobody actually writes movies, they just happen.
SW is definitely suffering in terms of quality from its shallow lore.

I will try to watch less of their movies after Infinity, specially if they start other mega saga.

>they wanted Benedict Cumberbitch to take over for RDJ as the big draw but it didn't pan out enough.
Highest Box Office debut since Iron Man. Try again.

If superhero films start dwindling Marvel could focus on non traditional superheroes like Devil Dinosaur and Black Widow

>not the guy you're talking to
user, we are all friends here, take off your masks

I made a thread like this last week that I've still got up in another tab, waiting to be dissected.
Once I have consolidated all of the data I'll get back to you on hat.

Please no

yeah, they're still relying on RDJ to prop up the others, so no.

No fucking shit, they've only got him for 2 more years.
Did you seriously expect them to fling Bindlebum into Homecoming instead? They'd already finished fucking filming it!

Now that you mention it, I didn't know why the fuck they're bothering to put Strange in Thor 3. I guess now I do. Thanks, user.

>They've paid for a lot of critics

ftfy

I have a mental list of 10 and only 3 of these are on it.
Granted, I don't count street-level.

this

fucking star wars has never had a bad year profit wise and it's 40 now - not one movie has underperformed relative to budget, even though they haven't all been billion-dollar fuckfests

there's no objective limit on a popular franchise carefully managed, hell, i was half convinced Rogue One would tank but it's looking like it'll hit a billion, making it as profitable as The Phantom Menace (and only less profitable than the original movie because that had a microbudget)

i like a good shitpost as much as the next guy but realistically WB won't die from lack of superhero movies unless they absolutely try to rely on them for years and don't get budgets under control and they're all bad movies (that last is the only thing which seems likely) - they'll just start making other movies (and pray they're better than Jupiter Ascending)

DC on the other hand i would expect to pull out of publishing all-new stories any year now, becoming reprint only while the characters are used exclusively for merchandise, cartoons and live-action

are you seriously suggesting that sales falling "back" to pre-Rebirth levels is a good thing because DC appeared to have higher sales than Marvel for three months?

or am i just loving the shitpost here

And reptilians did 9/11.

>le rotten tomatoes is rigged
yeah nice one tell that to alice through the looking glass

Until China has an economic downturn.

The MCU is mostly a Chinese focused production, since the majority of their money comes from there. Movies Americans are lukewarm to China eats up, like the Transformers movies.

>appeared
they HAVE higher comic sales than Marvel. Diamond tracking how many comics are shipped doesn't mean literally anything.

And they've still retained an overall boost in sales.

SPEAR movie when?

>D....d....DC movies are bombs!

I guess the MCU is a dumpster fire, huh? Since the majority of Marvel movies did much worse than Suicide Squad.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
>Reported budget: $170 Million
>Actual Budget: $232 Million (forbes.com/sites/csylt/2015/01/27/disney-reveals-guardians-of-the-galaxy-was-over-budget-at-232-million/)
>Domestic: $333,176,600
>Worldwide: $773,312,399
>Budget was 30% of Worldwide Gross

Suicide Squad (2016)
>Production Budget: $175 million
>Domestic: $324,390,552
>Worldwide: $744,890,552 (Not released in China, the second largest movie market in the entire world.)
>Budget was 23% of Worldwide Gross

Iron Man (2008)
>Production Budget: $140 million
>Domestic: $318,412,101
>Worldwide:$585,174,222
>Budget was 24% of Worldwide Gross

Iron Man 2 (2010)
>Production Budget: $200 million
>Domestic: $312,433,331
>Worldwide: $623,933,331
>Budget was 32% of Worldwide Gross

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
>Production Budget: $170 million
>Domestic: $259,766,572
>Worldwide: $714,421,503
>Budget was 24% of Worldwide Gross

Doctor Strange (2016)
>Production Budget: $165 Million
>Domestic: $222,267,273
>Worldwide: $647,323,994
>Budget was 25% of Worldwide Gross

Thor:The Dark World (2013)
>Production Budget: $170 million
>Domestic:$206,362,140
>Worldwide:$644,602,516
>Budget was 26% of Worldwide Gross

Thor (2011)
>Production Budget: $150 million
>Domestic: $181,030,624
>Worldwide: $449,326,618
>Budget was 33% of Worldwide Gross

Ant-Man (2015)
>Production Budget: $130 million
>Domestic: $180,202,163
>Worldwide: $519,445,163
>Budget was 25% of Worldwide Gross

Captain America:The First Avenger (2011)
>Production Budget: $140 million
>Domestic: $176,654,505
>Worldwide: $370,569,774
>Budget was 38% of Worldwide Gross

The Incredible Hulk (2008)
>Production Budget: $150 million
>Domestic: $134,806,913
>Worldwide: $263,427,551
>Budget was 57% of Worldwide Gross

It's more because WB is spending much more on their films then Marvel Studios yet all the internal problems means that they aren't making nearly as much back as they keep thinking they will.
They aren't "flops" and are financially successful, but they keep making back a crapload less then what WB wants.

Likely the DCCU will continue on as long as it makes moderate profits though, so no worries there.

well memed

>Cumberbatch already failed
How ungodly mad does a movie studio have make somebody that self-delusion's their only comfort?

a good debut =/= the box office draw of Robert Downey Jr.

I'm not mad at the MCU at all, just stating facts.

ant man made $518 million on a $130 million production budget (4:1 return on investment), suicide squad made 746 on 175 (4.2:1 roi)

how much they spent on marketing is up in the air; you can make educated guesses based on reported spending (as most tv spending is noted by Variety in a weekly list of high-spending tv spots) but that doesn't obviously include other media and every campaign is different - and also, the same timeslot on the same channel on different days has different costs reflecting different viewership numbers, so it doesn't really tell you how effective something is even if you know it was a really great trailer and how many times it played

there were early rumors that SS needed up to $800m to break even; this is credible given WB's budget spending on similar productions (for example, the two Dark Knight movies cost phenomenal amounts due to various predictable factors such as returning casts, but also due to things like Nolan's choice of IMAX filmstock, which is tremendously expensive, to film the first sequence of TDKR, on top of which both movies had high ad spends) and given recent similar flops such as ASM2, which we know from internal documents leaked by North Korea, as well as other sources, was not profitable

so while it's guesswork and while it appears SS had both a higher roi in terms of raw gross:budget and a higher profit (one which swallows ant man's entire gross), it's not possible to say SS wasn't a weaker success, and given Marvel's history - especially with making lower-budget movies and marketing work, without which they wouldn't have hit Phase 2 - and WB's history, it's still credible that antman had the bigger profit

i mean fuck, user, we don't even know what they were paying Will Smith out of the gross, but it sure wasn't nothing, and there's a whole lot of actors there who'd have been looking for similar deals, so it could very easily be true just because of the size of the main cast

Marvel literally cannot GIVE their comics away. They're doubling or tripling orders just to inflate sales because nobody is actually buying their books.

I mean fuck, they sent out two copies of Champions in one of those subscription boxes, got Scholastic to buy a truckload of them, and did all this...

bleedingcool.com/2016/08/08/the-standees-the-pins-the-exclusives-how-marvel-will-make-champions-1-comic-in-october/

>Champions, Champions, Champions, Champions, Champions! If I sound like a broken record, it’s only because we’re putting a lot of muscle behind our next great franchise.

>This is how they are going to do it. Retailers who match 200% of a retailer’s order of All-New All-Different Avengers #9, the one that featured the first new Wasp, will get 15% extra discount. 175% will get 10% extra and 150% will get 5% extra off.

>Those who match 200% can then order on top of that the Skottie Young cover, the Champions Variant cover, Hip Hop, Blank, both the Spider-Man and Hulk and the Johnny Blaze John Tyler Christopher action figure covers.

>They can also get the Champions party gear, 100 postcards, 20 lithographs, Champions pins…. The standees....>…the window cling… any of the Jay P Fosgitt Party variant cover…

>And one copy of the Party variant.

>While the Alex Ross cover is 1:100. The Captain America 75th anniversary cover is 1:50. And a 1:1000 variant – no details but could the odds be it’s by Joe Quesada? He does do these…

>Oh and the exclusive retailer cover availability, which adds 3000 to 4500 on for each comic shop that picks it up
And the funny thing is, they STILL came in second to Escape from NY vs Big Trouble in Little China. In its second month Champions fell by 85% from number 2 to number FORTY-SEVEN.

I don't know how anybody can look at Marvel and say "yes, that is a healthy company."

>there's a whole lot of actors there who'd have been looking for similar deals
literally no one on that cast has nearly the sway to demand Will Smith level money.

Well yeah, because Marvel paid the critics.

Nigga, he drew more worldwide than RDJ did when RDJ was in the same position. That's a fact.
Rob's had 5 more bloody movies since to establish himself. If Strange 2 & 3 & New Avengers or whatever the shit do poorly, you'll have a stronger case. So either share your crystal ball or accept nobody's taking you seriously.

This is pure Marvel salt and you know it. Clickbait sites have been dumping any and all anti-DC rumors they can get because they know it riles up the Mouseketeers.

pajiba.com/think_pieces/no-suicide-squad-doesnt-need-to-make-800-million-to-break-even-.php

forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2016/08/12/suicide-squad-dominates-despite-medias-gloom-and-doom/

>So, all of the box office numbers so far look great. How does this stack up against the film’s costs? Well, first of all I can tell you that these $800 million “break-even point”claims floating around are false. ... Claims in the press of marketing exceeding $150-200 million are gross exaggerations, as are rumors of costly reshoots that pushed the filming budget closer toward the $200 million range.

>The entertainment press loves big, inflated numbers. It serves the purposes of maintaining the impression of bloated budgets and Hollywood excess, of troubled productions and flops, and of negative narratives that generate clickbait headlines and drive ad revenue higher for media sites hungry for dollars in the ever-more-competitive business of news and reporting. Since Hollywood is already in the habit of inflating its own numbers for accounting purposes, and since rival studios or ex-employees are always happy to provide anonymous hyperbole about expensive films teetering atthe edge of financial ruin, it’s not hard to understand why even reputable outlets and honest reports wind up spreading artificially high numbers and reinforcing false narratives that the latest blockbuster is really a dud.

>It’s not just common, it’s a consistent aspect of modern mass media. There are entire press outlets dedicated to the pursuit of tabloid journalism, rumormongering, gossip, and muckraking.

Ant-Man's marketing was pitiable, it should be noted.
'Member the first trailer? They didn't give a solitary shit. And the ad campaign, wew. That was a full-blown meme.
It was entirely held up by the Marvel Studios brandname. That it still did enough profit for a sequel is testament to how scary-monolithic that brandname's become.

>i was half convinced Rogue One would tank
Why?

Hell, the Ant-Man trailers made it seem like they were embarrassed about the film.

For what it's worth (very little) even my normie yuro friends talked to me about how the marketing for SS was everywhere.

>Diamond tracking how many comics are shipped doesn't mean literally anything.

It literally means how many comics were shipped.

Both Marvel and DC ship their comics at about 75% of cover price to retailers, non-refundable. DC briefly went to a model that shipped them essentially for free, and has now abandoned that practice.

DC's unit share in Nov 2016 was 31.30% and their dollar share was 26.17% (on 84 shipped items). Of top 300 on 82 DC items present they had a unit share of 39.97% of 7.65m (3,057,705 units) for 35.21% of $29.32m ($10,323,572). Some of these November shippings were still returnable at no cost to retailers and should be discounted, but Diamond has no methodology to account for that, because it's a distributor that doesn't normally handle returnable items and never set up a system to deal with reporting them.

Going back one year and comparing like for like DC had a unit share of 26.09% and a dollar share of 26.35% (on 72 shipped items). Of top 300 they had 76 items (some holdovers from previous months) for a unit share of 27.89% of 8.3m (2,314,870 units) and 27.50% of $34.73m ($9,550,750).

$9,550,750/76 is $125,667.763 average dollars per title for 2015; 2016 by contrast was $125,897.22, and the difference between them is meaningless because the inflation between them was 1.8% - 11/2015 was worth $226,201.973 to DC, more than 2016 for 8% fewer titles shipped, a non-negligible cost, and all of which were non-returnable in 2015. In fact in 2016 they printed and shipped some 742,835 additional floppies, and that's before we get into how many of those will end up being returned (probably not many because there were only 4 titles still in the program as of November).

tl;dr they're struggling to even stand still and it's costing them more money to do so

Will Smith doesn't have the sway to demand what he was getting, or they'd never have cast him; that's the point. Margot Robbie isn't fresh and new, she's up and coming and tipped for great things; you've got Oscar-winners Affleck and Leto in there too. This was not a cheap hire.

>forbes

Forbes literally prints rich-lists based on bullshit estimates every year. Don't put too much stock in their pronouncements; the production budget is known to be around $175m, compared to Ant-Man's $130m (and again much of this cost is due to higher main cast costs - more costumes, more feeding, more time on set getting everything right while everybody gets paid - you're much more likely to go into golden time with a large cast than with a small one).

We're talking about movies, which make vastly more than the comics.

How long can anons keep making these fucking threads?

I really, really would like a Moon Knight series in Netflix.

Not a movie: a TV Series.

As long as the MCU continues making a profit.

>Ant-Man made 200 million less profit than a movie featuring Batman, Joker and Harley Queen (in the peak of her popularity)
You played yourself, comrade.

>He's arguably the most famous comic book villain ever,

I would say it's not even arguable. Joker just is the most famous comic book villain ever. Who even comes close? Lex or Green Goblin might be distant number twos.

Didn't they confirm Suicide Squad 2 incredibly soon after the first one dropped? Usually isn't that move made due to huge profit? Or am I just remembering shit wrong?