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Is “superhero fatigue” real?
No one is a bigger superhero fan than I—well, I mean SOME people definitely are—but I haven’t made plans to see Captain America 4, er, Brave New World, yet. And I liked The Falcon and Winter Soldier series! And I have seen nearly every MCU film in theaters.
Has superhero fatigue set in for me too?
Maybe, maybe not. Partially because I’m not sure the phenomenon exists. And because who am I kidding? I’m gonna see Cap in theaters, probably this weekend. (Gotta justify that Regal Pass!)
But the question—whither superheroes?—matters. I’ve written about this topic three times, twice through the frame of “Are We in a Marvel-cession?” (see here or here) and once for The Ankler asking, “What genre will replace superheroes?”
I’ve sort of flip-flopped my position over time. At first, I didn’t see superhero fatigue setting in, but 2023 changed my mind. And 2024 may have changed it again. So let’s see what the data actually says.
Some Charts on the Rise and Decline of Superheroes at the Box Office
Let’s start with the highest level look at superhero flicks at the box office. First, here’s worldwide box office receipts:
The domestic box office looks mostly the same:
Side-by-side you can see again, similar numbers, but a larger drop from international in recent years:
In general, 2018 to 2019 looks like a peak that just won’t be replicated in the next few years. One big reason? Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: End Game put up gigantic box office numbers, while Black Panther and Captain Marvel also had tremendous openings. Sans those four films, the graph wouldn’t spike quite as much.
I highlighted three factors in the above chart—in addition to potential superhero fatigue—that likely impacted the number of films that came out each year:
- Covid-19 shut down global production of feature films, and stopped filmgoing in 2020!
- After 2020, US films cratered in China. No one quite knows why, but foreign films have mostly stopped performing well in the Middle Kingdom.
- The 2023 strikes delayed a lot of major films intended for 2024 and beyond.
So here’s the number of films per year released by the studios:
This shows the decline starting in 2020 when basically no superhero films came out. I’d also argue that 2024 feels slightly misleading. Three of those films featured two D-tier Spider-Man characters (Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter) and one Spider-Man A-lister (Venom).
Ah…but what about 2023? This is the best argument for superhero fatigue, since as many films with caped crusaders came out in 2023 as 2016, and more than 2018 or 2019. The issue is the box office per film didn’t increase at the same rate:
At this point, though, I do worry about “drawing lines on a chart”, as I just did above. Specifically, we’ve seen the average box office per superhero film trend down the last few years. And so we naturally sort of assume that slide continues. Line goes down, the opposite of crypto’s “Number goes up”.
But that may not happen! The problem is “sample size”. When you summarize data by years, you naturally shrink the sample size. It’s only been 25 years since Spider-Man proved that the superhero genre would do HUGE numbers with great CGI. One year, good or bad, can throw the entire trendline off. Again, 25 isn’t all that big of a sample size.
That’s what makes this year such an interesting test case. We have four major superhero films currently slated in 2025 (Captain America 4, Superman, The Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: First Steps) and that’s a LOT more star power (and by “star power” I mean popular characters) than 2024. If 2025’s crop—which features two American icons—can return to a “normal” average box office—say $300 million domestic per film with one break out in the Deadpool & Wolverine range—look how the chart looks:
Again, that looks like a clear drop compared to past years, meaning we have a new normal, but we’re also nowhere close to the eight or nine superhero films per year. (If the third Into the Spider-verse had stayed in 2025, I’d take the over on $1.5 billion domestic.)
Or Is This an MCU Problem?
Maybe this isn’t a “superhero” problem, but a Marvel problem, as I’ve explored twice before. That said, looking at the data, well, it’s also a great illustration of the problem of small sample sizes.
2024 threw off some of the trend lines for Marvel. In a good way.
Now, they didn’t release much (only one film), but what a film. Look, here’s the theatrical performance over time:
Here’s how that changes the rolling average of domestic box office. The black line represents the lowest-grossing MCU film of the last five films and the red line is the highest-grossing.
And since Deadpool & Wolverine got an “A” Cinemascore, it boosted that average. Same goes for the IMDb rating:
Of course, Deadpool & Wolverine was also the third film in an extremely popular, R-rated, originally-an-X-Men film for Fox Studios that got squeezed into the MCU. Does that represent the MCU’s renewed vigor or is it an outlier too?
We’ll see. Captain America 4 could return things to form or it could underperform. Personally, I’d bet Thunderbolts underperforms, just because they’re obscure characters, but I’d bet on Fantastic Four. That’s just this year. If the Avengers films, scheduled for a few years out, revive interest à la past Avengers films, the sky’s the limit.
Don’t Forget Superheroes Have ALWAYS Done Well (Just Not This Well)
Pulling this data, one other thing stuck out to me: it’s not like superheroes were new in the 2010s.
Consider:
- Superman (1978) was the third biggest film at the box office in 1978. (Can you guess the top two films?)
- Batman (1989) was the #1 film of the year. Batman Returns was #3 in 1992. Batman Forever was #2 in 1995.
- Spider-Man was #1 in 2002. And Spider-Man 2 was #2 in 2004. Spider-Man 3 was #1 in 2007.
- Batman Begins was #8 in 2005. The Dark Knight was the biggest film in 2008. And it won the Academy Award for Best Picture. (Okay it didn’t. But should have.)
Here’s the pre-2000’s box office in chart form:
This chart says to me that, at some level, superheroes will often be an enduring draw at the box office. Demand for superhero films has existed for decades, but not the ability to convincingly make these films. When that technology became available—CGI in the early 2000s—audiences were ready. And I don’t think that that demand is going away.
My Bottom Line After 2024
Looking at all that, here’s how I’d summarize the state of superheroes at the box office:
I think superhero fatigue is real…
…but also a lot of other factors drove the decline in superhero box office…
…especially with some of Marvel Studios’ creative decisions.
… Superheroes continue to be a bankable genre at the box office…
…but the 2018 to 2019 time frame represented a peak superheroes won’t easily get back to.
And all this could change rapidly. 2024 really did feature some likely underwhelming characters in Kraven the Hunter and Madame Web. Superman is just in a different league entirely. And if the MCU returns to its pre-2020 creative form—which I wouldn’t bet on!—or James Gunn turns into the next Kevin Feige—again, I wouldn’t bet on that!—superheroes could again conquer the box office.
The Data
Whenever I pull a lot of data, I like to explain where it came from. In this case, I used The-Numbers’ superhero category. I downloaded their entire chart which gave me 179 entries. I then added both of Pixar’s Incredibles films. From those 181 films, I cut any with less than $1 million in total box office (which cut the number to 155) then I cut any with zero US box office (which cut it to 148).
From there, I deleted a few films which I didn’t think were the right genre (like Dick Tracy and Superhero Movie, which is a comedy), and some anime films (like My Hero Academia). That left me with 148 superhero films. I then categorized them by franchise.
