‘Thunderbolts*’ Kills Marvel’s Comeback Hopes With $100M Loss

It seems like Marvel will have to wait yet another couple of months to see if Fantastic Four: First Steps will bring some profit after a series of box office flops.

The studio had high hopes for Thunderbolts*, a new refreshing take on some morally grey characters with an all-star cast led by Florence Pugh; the movie kicked off back in April on a pretty promising note, quickly becoming one of Marvel’s highest-rated films ever and potentially a high-grossing one.

Several weeks later this hope vanished completely, and now Marvel might be facing another major financial loss.

Thunderbolts* Lacks $150 Million in the Box Office Compared to Disney’s Initial Plan

• On Rotten Tomatoes, Thunderbolts* holds scores of 88% and 93% from critics and viewers
• On IMDb, the movie is rated 7.6/10

The movie, which premiered in the US on April 22, has so far reached $357 million in the box office worldwide, though even a number this big is pretty bad news for a movie that cost Disney a whopping amount of $180 million.

Additionally, prior to Thunderbolts*’ premiere the film was believed to perform with at least $500 million gross by the time it’s out of theatres, but the date is coming up and the movie isn’t even close to its initial goal.

As a result, Thunderbolts* has now turned into another big trouble for Disney that is currently projected to lose around $100 million more; to make things worse, the movie went down to the bottom of the list of Marvel’s highest-grossing films ever, currently being regarded as the second lowest-grossing flick of the franchise after 2023’s The Marvels.

Marvel Fans Think Superhero Movies Aren’t Worthy a Cinema Ticket Anymore

With the rise of streaming platforms that get the newest and highly anticipated movies just a month after they arrived in cinemas, it might not be that surprising that those who already lost hope to see Marvel’s high-quality films think they can easily wait until Thunderbolts* is dropped on Disney+.

“It's been 17 years since Iron Man and Marvel lost most of its direction after Endgame. There's nothing too surprising here. But if Marvel can string together some good quality flicks in a row they could probably win a good chunk of the audience back. Gotta convince people it's worth a trip to the theater instead of waiting 4 months to watch on Disney+”, Redditor SevereEducation2170 wrote in a thread.

“Unless they can drastically slim down the budgets of their blockbusters, Disney needs pervasive "we're so back" energy if they want the billions of dollars in profit again”, TrueGuardian15 added.

“They're gonna have to go to smaller budgets and do things just differently in general, unless it's something like Doomsday/Secret Wars, those are probably gonna hit a billion. For in-between movies they can't do like 200-300+ mill budget for every movie”, MoistTubes commented.

Thunderbolts* is currently playing in theatres worldwide.