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It’s easy — really, too easy at this point — to proclaim that the era of superhero movie is over. At the start of this month, Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*” opened to some of the strongest reviews the Marvel Cinematic Universe has received in years, and yet, by the end of May, it will have earned less domestically ($174 million to date) than 2022’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” did in its opening weekend ($187 million). Last week, Marvel Studios announced that it was pushing “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Avengers: Secret Wars” from May to December of 2026 and 2027, respectively, while pulling three other untitled Marvel projects set to open within that same timeframe from the schedule entirely. The former decision will allow directors Joe and Anthony Russo more time to marshal two of the biggest, most expensive feature films ever made. The latter decision is pure commerce, an easing of supply in response to the clear reduction in demand.
To be sure, a quick scan of box office charts makes plain that audiences’ appetites have shifted to movies like “Sinners,” “Lilo & Stitch,” and “A Minecraft Movie” that aren’t just about costumed extraordinary beings swooping in to defeat an overwhelming threat. But while superheroes may no longer be an invincible box office force, their obsolescence has also been wildly overstated. For one, some of these movies are still global sensations, like 2024’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” and 2023’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” For another, Disney and Warner Bros. remain deeply invested in moviegoers turning out for comic book adaptations worldwide at a billion dollar scale.
In July, DC Studios and Marvel Studios are each taking striking creative risks in the hopes of reintroducing — and revitalizing — their respective cinematic universes. “Superman,” written and directed by co-DC Studios chief James Gunn, will be the first time the Man of Steel headlines a movie in which he is but one of dozens of other superhero characters — a decades-long comic book conceit that hasn’t ever really been tested with audiences that don’t know their Metamorpho from their Mister Terrific.
For “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” the second feature film from “WandaVision” director Matt Shakman, Marvel is taking the opposite approach, reintroducing the company’s First Family in a retro-futuristic 1960s New York City that exists in separate reality from the MCU, no prior knowledge required.
Both of these movies shoulder a burden beyond their own commercial prospects. David Corenswet’s Superman failing to soar would be kryptonite for Warner Bros.’ longterm plans for its wider DC Universe. And Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach stumbling while taking their titular first steps would seriously weaken the storytelling foundations for “Doomsday” and “Secret Wars.”
So it’s fair to say the stakes are quite high; if these movies don’t work, or if audiences actually have just had their fill of this genre, then superheroes really could wind up fading into the pop-culture periphery like rom-coms and Westerns. No genre totally disappears in Hollywood, of course — Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves” and Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” revived the Western in the early 1990s and won the Oscar for best picture. But superhero movies stand apart because the extravagant costs to make and market them demand an audience of commensurate size will show up to see them.
By cutting Marvel’s output over the next two years almost in half, however, Disney has mitigated its exposure and given its highest grossing division necessary creative breathing room. Gunn and his DC co-chief Peter Safran, meanwhile, have made a point of not flooding the marketplace with multiple projects, nor greenlighting anything until the screenplay is totally ready. Given the pedigree of the creative forces behind these movies and the cultural currency of the marquee characters at their center (like Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman and Black Panther), the odds are strong that moviegoers will continue to turn out for the kind of the popcorn thrills that have made superhero films such a reliable blockbuster engine for the last 25 years. There just won’t be nearly as many of them as there used to be.
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