Marvel Flounders at the Box Office With ‘The Marvels’

The once-superheroic Marvel Studios is now merely mortal.

For 15 years, Marvel delivered one hit movie after another — 32 in all, with “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” which collected $846 million in May, the most recent. Sure, there were wobbles. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” arrived to $106 million in February and collected $476 million by the end of its run. Even Marvel’s lesser blockbusters, however, were still blockbusters.

But the boutique studio stumbled badly over the weekend, with “The Marvels,” a sequel costing roughly $300 million to make and market that arrived to $47 million in ticket sales in the United States and Canada, the lowest ever for a Marvel release. “This opening is an unprecedented Marvel box office collapse,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on ticket sales.

Until now, “The Incredible Hulk,” released in 2008, was the studio’s worst debut — at $79 million in the United States and Canada, after adjusting for inflation. “The Marvels” is a sequel to “Captain Marvel,” which generated $153 million in opening-weekend ticket sales at domestic theaters in 2019.

“The Marvels,” about a trio of superheroines whose powers become entangled, took in an additional $63.3 million overseas. Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani play the lead roles, with Ms. Parris and Vellani reprising characters they originated on Disney+ series. “The Marvels” was directed by Nia DaCosta, the first Black woman to oversee a Marvel film.

Tony Chambers, Disney’s executive vice president of theatrical distribution, acknowledged that the results were “disappointing” given Marvel’s “unparalleled batting average.” “There may have been a barrier to entry, with some people assuming they needed to have already watched the Disney+ shows in order to know what was going on in the film,” he said.