PlatnumRoyce

I'll just drop the CW point instead of going further down the rabbit hole. Anyways re: the weird name, I just assumed it was intended to boost Ms. Marvel D+ show (and, to a lesser extent, Wandavision) while doing no harm to Captain Marvel 2 and providing some help to it (if Ms. Marvel was successful). I just don't think it's a large lift to get audiences to associate CM2 with "the marvels." The actual poster for the film, if it mirrors the rest of the marketing, is much weirder to me than the name. Birds of Prey barely has Harley Quinn in the title despite that being the film's obvious selling point. You can debate impact of name on the margins but poster, trailer, etc. all easily communicated that Robbie was the star of the film. The Marvels' first official poster really doesn't do that. Larson is centered but she's visually smaller and the horizon brings your attention on Ms. Marvel. It doesn't send the visual language I'd expect it to send for Captain Marvel 2.

So is my assumption that, of course, the film will really be marketed as Captain Marvel 2/Captain Marvel & Friends just off base (no matter each character's relative role in the script)? To take the other guy's example "Captain America Civil War be titled just "Civil War" is pretty literally what happened. The actual marketing stressed Civil War and the name "CA: Civil War" is discordant with the film's marketing that presented Iron Man as a co-leading role. It's sort of wild that they passed on explicitly using Iron Man in the film's title but audiences easily picked up that it was his movie too.

d

Feels like an old fashioned "this movie flopped" effect.

IM4 (Civil War) paid for the sins of IM3

On that topic, M3Gan's marketing head did a few interviews e.g. on Belloni's "The Town" podcast

Re-upping my "movio.co" weekend update bleg. I have about a month of data missing from early january 2023 or Sep 2022 Also, given that I have most of the data catalogued since q4 2022, does anyone have any queries they want me to pull?

I've historically made that argument but I don't really think it's true. Thor 1 wasn't a breakout hit but, unlike Cap 1, he made enough to easily sustain a stand alone franchise. It's the 15th highest grossing film of 2011 just below...Rise of Planet of the Apes, Thor 1's box office was pretty similar to 2010's Clash of Titans (big mythological fantasy series boosted by post Avatar 3D conversion). I doubt we would have gotten a Thor 3 based on the actual quality of Thor 2, but it did perfectly fine on its own terms. How much of Thor 1's gross was due to the IM2's tease of Thor at the end of the film?

I'm not saying you're wrong but Quantumania would have made 240/250M if it had the same legs as other pandemic/post-pandemic MCU films with the worst "day 1-7" legs. I don't think there's a large audience of "I'll catch AM3 in 2 months" folks versus "I don't inherently love Ant-Man and this doesn't seem worth my time" ppl. If you average AM1's posttrak and cinemascore, you get an A- CS equivalent, paired with a weak box office relative to peers, you get the same for AM2 (despite critical praise at the time) and AM3 is performing poorly. Why isn't this a "wrath of the titans" style scenario where a sequel fails due to poor reception + the lack of the halo protecting previous films?

Not really a weekend question but does anyone else track Movio's weekend demo data? https://movio.co/resources/weekend-insights-20/ I've mostly captured it for the last few months but I have a few weeks worth of holes.

If anyone doesn't know this, you can look at HTML for "score-details-json" and pull the raw numbers. Right now it's 33 up - 1 down which makes unverified 89% (74-9)

It would be hard to convince me out of the idea that they saw Wakanda Forever as a way to wrap a more positive bow on Phase IV and attempt to change the narrative. I read the Fiege interview pre-Ant-Man and it's notable to me how there's really no strong marketing answer provided for defining phase 4 v. phase 5 when this sort of stuff is what he's always great at providing. I really do wonder if everyone's downplaying the impact of production problems here, starting with karma for firing James Gunn? If Gunn was never fired, GotG would be a 2020 film and it was being sold, pre-Gunn's firing, as setting up more "cosmic" stories. So when Gunn was fired in mid 2018, it looks like the Phase 4 plan was vaguely: SM:FFH -> GotG3 -> Black Widow -> Shang Chi -> Eternals ->Strange -> Spider-Man: Kraven (if they had even thought that far ahead) -> Thor 4 -> Black Panther 2 with Captain Marvel 1 yet to be released. So that's mostly just a focus on "strange new worlds" with some post-endgame stuff (but most of that relegated to secondary characters on tv). That doesn't tell us what the next avengers threat would be but "GotG -> Eternals -> Strange -> Thor 4" easily lets you use massive established franchises to tease whatever the new big event will be if it has a cosmic focus. Did Gunn's firing cause a 2019 pivot to the multiverse which was then sold as the heart of Phase IV (with a 6 months of content in 2021 crammed with multiversal content) with Marvels and Ant-Man also adding Multiversal elements during their early production in 2019/2020?

I want to push back on this: people may or may not know the phrase "phase x" but that's irrelevant because, in practice, it was identical to "before/after Avengers film ___." "Phase 2" doesn't have to be called phase 2 to be powered by "sequels to the characters from Avengers 1." Post-Endgame as a public concept is really no different from "post the invasion of New York City." Both as easily known bits of mainstream pop culture. Marvel's branding problem for "phase V" is that "we released an Ant-Man movie and are about to release sequels to pre-Endgame films" just doesn't sell "this is a new period" in the way an Avengers film does so any marketing impact will be muted.

That's not an extreme enough take. The only major animated film whose legs are even vaguely in the same universe was the (PG-13) Simpsons movie. It just 100% did not play like a children's animated film.

Verified audience score != unverified score and TV != movies on rotten tomatoes. I mean, why not use IMDb? Ant-Man has 22% of reviews a 5/10 or below and 41% of reviews below a 7/10 (RT fresh cutoff is 3.5/5 - but that probably doesn't translate directly). GotG - Special has 14.2% at or below a 5/10 and 32% below a 7/10. 1.4k reviews on RT for GotG:HS versus 65k on IMDb. At the very least, let's average these guys out.

It's worth flagging that GotG actively passed on selling the film as "introducing the O.G. Thanos" despite it being a sneakily large portion of the film.

Nah, this marketing/Word of Mouth push has been floating around the Flash since Ezra Miller was constantly getting into trouble a year ago.

...So between Sat AM and the end of Sunday, AntMan inched up from 3.5/5 to 4/5 stars but presumably didn't hit 80% or above because that's not mentioned here ("dollars are beating audience exits (B CinemaScore here for Ant-Man 3, Comscore/Screen Engine PostTrak still at 3.5 stars and 75%")

Gen Z sure, but Millennials are older than you're imagining. Keaton basically does as well as any MCU actor/character in morning consult's superhero polls among Millennials. https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2022/04/19151216/2204052_crosstabs_MC_ENTERTAINMENT_THE_BATMAN_Adults.pdf versus https://morningconsult.com/2021/12/08/marvel-movies-characters-rankings/ (with raw PDF also findable)

Has it? My very infrequent attempts to get a handle on foreign markets really suggest they're not like the US. Europe's version of the MPA theme report shows static or growing box office admissions versus the US being on a 20 year admissions decline pre-pandemic. Sure, the box office admissions overall are below 2019's but Avatar 2's setting admissions records in many Europeans markets. Is there a US v. world divergence here?

I don't see why the marvels has obviously far worse variables when no one has seen the actual film and you have a more receptive China. Thor: Ragnarok also made quite a lot less than Captain Marvel. Are you more likely to see Thor 4 if you've seen Thor 3? Downside for Marvels is probably lower than L&T but I think people are underselling the upside and baseline.

The fact that it's a normal sequel to a basically well liked movie with a high baseline awareness that was boosted higher by Endgame (though IW built a good chunk of that in) https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2021/12/03162342/2111133_crosstabs_MC_ENTERTAINMENT_MARVEL_PT_1_Adults_v1_CC-1-5.pdf Why would The Marvels need incredible word of mouth simply to retain a baseline level of interest from people who already paid to see a CM film?

Sure but Homecoming (with Iron Man) was flat outside of China relative to TASM1. I still think Homecoming's gross was oversold even if it didn't go full Batman Begins.

I would amend that to mid 30s to mid 40s but that's not exactly right either. The MPAA publishes a yearly theme report which includes "2 week posttrak data for the top 5 grossing films domestically. The raw average Caucasian % of all films in those lists (2013 - 2021) is 50.07 with a peak of 67% for 1917 (2020 weirdness) or 64% (Lego movie and catching fire) and a valley of 32% (Bad Boys 4 Life) or 36% (Black Panther 1). With stuff like Star Wars or GotG getting in the mid 50s Can you reconcile this stuff with a hypothesis of an anti-caucasian/pro-hispanic bias on opening day itself (given that partial posttrak data often comes from thursday or friday) that fades away over time? Even 2 week posttrak at ~45/50% number leaves demographic data to explain. Here's e.g. the MPAA theme report for 2019 if you want to dive into some demo polls - PowerPoint Presentation (motionpictures.org) . it also includes age based frequency data based on polling.

Ant-Man 3's 34% compares to No Way Home at 32%, DS2 and Fast 9 had 35%, Shang Chi had 36%, Venom 38, Morbius 37, Thor 4 had 39%, The Batman and JW: Dominion were at 41%. Ant-Man 2 was all the way at 53% white. Nope and the first Black Panther were both at 35% as well. I think the obvious takeaway is that something other than race is the causal factor here.