Where Data Tells the Story
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If there ever was a surefire way of making a billion dollars at the box office, it was making a big-budget superhero movie in the 2010s. Between 2010 and 2019, twelve movies based on comic book adaptations reached the billion-dollar threshold at the global box office, with “Avengers: Infinity War”, released in 2018, and “Avengers: Endgame” from 2019 even surpassing $2 billion in box office sales.
Since 2020, there has only been one more billion-dollar comic book adaptation – “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021) – or two, if you’re counting “Deadpool & Wolverine”, which is officially a spin-off from the X-Men series. Moreover, several high-profile releases, e.g. “The Marvels” (2023) or “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (2023), have disappointed at the box office in recent years, giving rise to the idea of “superhero fatigue”.
According to The Numbers, adaptations of comic books and graphic novels accounted for just 15.6 and 3.2 percent of ticket sales at the North American box office in 2023 and 2024, down from 29.9 and 31.0 percent in 2021 and 2022, respectively. While some argue that this is due to “superhero fatigue” after a decade-long overabundance of DC and Marvel movies, others say it’s just “mediocre movie fatigue”, suggesting that many of the latest installments of popular comic book franchises have been lazy cash grabs.
This year’s box office performance of major comic book adaptations such as “Superman” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” would suggest that audiences are still open to enjoying a good superhero blockbuster. Both movies received generally positive reviews and are among the highest-grossing films of the year so far.