The Hunger Games prequel wins the weekend box office, The Marvels keeps bombing
By Dan Selcke
The box office bounced back this week thanks to a couple big new films opening in theaters, most notably The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. This Hunger Games prequel movie tells revolves around a young Coriolanus Snow, who franchise veterans know better as the tyrannical President Snow played by Donald Sutherland. In his younger days he’s played by Tom Blyth and helps a young tribute from District 12 played by Rachel Zegler. The movie took in around $44 million domestically and $55 internationally, for a grand total of $98 million, according to The Numbers. It’s less than any of the older Hunger Games movies opened at, but still not bad.
After that, the animated jukebox musical Trolls Band Together pulled in around $30 million domestically, according to The A.V. Club. Worldwide, the new Trolls movie cleared its $95 million budget. The same can’t be said for The Marvels, which in its second weekend saw a 77% drop in ticket sales. This Marvel superhero spectacular cost roughly $220 million to make, and has so far collected around $161 million at the box office. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a bomb.
Here are the domestic totals for the weekend:
- The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: $44 million
- Trolls Band Together: $32 million
- The Marvels: $10.4 million
- Thanksgiving: $10.3 million
- Five Nights At Freddy’s: $3.5 million
Star Iman Vellani isn’t worried about The Marvels bombing: “That’s for Bob Iger”
It’s still a little surreal to see a Marvel movie perform this badly, since it wasn’t that long ago that this franchise seemed untouchable. Part of the problem is the high cost of Marvel movie-making. The Marvels and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes brought in roughly the same amount of money on their opening weekends, and have inspired roughly the same sorts of responses from critics. But The Hunger Games prequel cost less than half of what The Marvels cost to produce, so it should have no problem making back its budget and then some. But The Marvels bet big and lost big.
The stars of the movie are taking this in stride, because what other option do they have? “I don’t want to focus on something that’s not even in my control, because what’s the point?” actor Iman Vellani, who plays Ms. Marvel, told Yahoo Entertainment. “That’s for [Disney president] Bob Iger.”
"[The box office] has nothing to do with me. I’m happy with the finished product, and the people that I care about enjoyed the film. It’s genuinely a good time watching this movie, and that’s all we can ask for with these films. It has superheroes, it take place in space, it’s not that deep and it’s about teamwork and sisterhood. It’s a fun movie, and I’m just so happy that I can share it with people."
Most folk who watched The Marvels do seem to have enjoyed it. It’s just a shame more didn’t tune in, both for the movie’s sake and for the sake of Vellani’s Disney+ show Ms. Marvel, which aired its first season in 2022. Adil El Arbi, who directed two episodes of that first season alongside his partner Bilall Fallah, hinted earlier that whether Ms. Marvel gets a second season could depend on the performance of The Marvels. Well, now we know that The Marvels performed badly, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up for Ms. Marvel season 2.
Next. The Marvels is too good to be bombing at the box office. dark
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