It’s been a strange summer at the box office. Heading into June, the tone around the state of moviegoing was bordering on apocalyptic, with theater chains and major studios rallying around the mantra of “just survive till ’25” in light of underperforming blockbusters and a diminished film slate. (Never mind that the main catalyst for the sparse schedule goes back to the Hollywood labor strikes, when these very studios destroyed all the momentum that the Barbenheimer phenomenon generated.) What’s even more disheartening is that some of the movies that bombed, including The Fall Guy and Furiosa, were well-liked by critics and audiences alike but just couldn’t catch on with enough people. I suspect history will be kind to Furiosa, in particular, but for now, George Miller’s latest masterpiece is emblematic of the industry’s box office woes.
The good news: In the past month, animated features have helped the box office rebound. Both Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4 grossed more than $100 million domestically in their opening weekends, underlining that, once again, sequels are a safe bet under the right circumstances. (Inside Out 2 has since become the highest-grossing animated film of all time, which is great news for Disney and not-so-great news for anyone hoping that Pixar would veer away from becoming a sequel factory.) Then, this past weekend, Twisters exceeded expectations by whipping up just north of $80 million: a helpful reminder that, if you build a blockbuster with broad appeal packaged around an up-and-coming star, people will come. But for all these recent triumphs, the one movie that’s long been earmarked as this summer’s savior hails from the world of superheroes.
By any measure, Deadpool & Wolverine will be a major hit. The Merc With a Mouth’s initiation into the Marvel Cinematic Universe is projected to earn upwards of $160 million in its opening weekend, which would make it the biggest-ever debut for an R-rated film. With so few superhero blockbusters on the docket throughout 2024—and after a decade-plus in which these projects were reliable moneymakers—Deadpool & Wolverine is, perhaps more than any other film, the biggest beneficiary of our current content vacuum. As a result, it will probably be a matter of when, not if, Deadpool & Wolverine becomes one of the highest-grossing movies of the year. The studios, in turn, can point to Deadpool & Wolverine as proof that superheroes are back in the ascendancy, and that without these movies headlining the summer swing, the entire industry suffers. But even if the film reinvigorates the box office, that doesn’t mean the superhero genre is still a panacea for Hollywood.
While two superhero movies cracked the 10 highest-grossing films of 2023—Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse—the year was defined by the many efforts that landed with a thud. On the DC front, the quartet of Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash, Blue Beetle, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom bombed, which could be chalked up to Warner Bros. making it clear to fans that it’s wiping the slate clean ahead of James Gunn’s Superman. The same can’t be said for the MCU, however, which saw Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels underwhelm, with the latter becoming the worst-performing movie in the franchise’s history. (Yes, even worse than Edward Norton’s The Incredible Hulk.)
Of course, Disney would like to think The Marvels was an aberration—a cautionary tale of doing too much too fast—especially when audiences responded enthusiastically to Guardians 3. But expecting superhero franchises to carry the blockbuster load may well be a thing of the past. With Barbie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Oppenheimer leading the way, 2023 was the first time in over two decades that the top three box office earners didn’t include a sequel or a remake. (The last time it happened was 2001, courtesy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Shrek, and Monsters, Inc.) Granted, adapting an iconic toy brand and video game franchise might not be everyone’s idea of bold, original filmmaking, but it does speak to moviegoers craving more variety in their blockbuster diet.
Going forward, we should be resetting expectations for superhero movies in the macro. It’s hard to imagine a world where the likes of Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man aren’t continuing to reel audiences in, no matter how many times these characters are rebooted. But when it comes to more obscure heroes, success is far from a sure thing anymore. At the height of the superhero boom, Ant-Man and Shazam were box office draws; last year’s sequels painted a different picture. Even if Madame Web hadn’t been ridiculed on arrival—including by the movie’s own star—a tertiary Spider-Man character never would have moved the needle. No offense to Kraven the Hunter, but, uh, does anyone actually give a shit about Kraven the Hunter? (None of this applies to Tom Hardy’s Venom trilogy, which belongs in its own category of erotic, experimental cinema.)
Where does Deadpool & Wolverine fit into all this? We know it’ll make bank, thanks in part to two stars in Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman who’ve long been synonymous with their respective characters. But the movie itself feels like less of a rallying cry for the superhero genre than a death rattle. From the twisted mind of Shawn Levy, Deadpool & Wolverine panders to empty nostalgia in a similar fashion to The Flash, only this time, it’s about resurrecting (or desecrating, depending on how you look at it), the 20th Century Fox superhero catalog. There are cameos aplenty, “edgy” humor that mostly amounts to characters saying “fuck” repeatedly, and Wolverine in a yellow costume that made grown men cry on set. (Truly, are men OK?) Deadpool & Wolverine is engineered to appeal to a certain crowd, but it’s not bringing anything new to the table; rather, it’s a film that believes simply bundling familiar IP matters more than doing anything novel with it.
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Does Hollywood recognize the difference, let alone care? The concern, as always, is that the industry takes the wrong lessons from its greatest triumphs. Did moviegoers embrace Barbie because it was in the hands of a visionary auteur like Greta Gerwig, or do people really want a new MCU in the Mattel Cinematic Universe? Was the key to M3GAN’s success a clever script from Akela Cooper packaged around a memeable title character, or will any lazy premise about AI invading our homes do the trick? By the same token, will studios acknowledge that Deadpool & Wolverine is a unique moviegoing event in a summer deprived of them, or will they double down on superhero nostalgia in spite of all the recent failures?
Steven Spielberg, a man who knows a thing or two about creating crowd-pleasing blockbusters, once opined that superhero movies would go the way of the Western. “These cycles have a finite time in popular culture,” he told the Associated Press in 2015. “There will come a day when the mythological stories are supplanted by some other genre that possibly some young filmmaker is just thinking about discovering for all of us.” Deadpool & Wolverine may be shaping up to be a record-breaking hit, but the variables for its success can’t exactly be transferred onto other tentpoles. A movie like this is a temporary salve for the industry’s box office malaise, not a cure-all. Superhero fatigue is real, even if the genre’s most high-profile heroes remain exempt from it. As for what comes next in the world of blockbusters, it’s high time Hollywood does something it’s always feared: It’ll have to get creative.
