By Joshua Tyler
| Published
This is the summer that confirmed superhero movies are over. They’ll still be around here and there, but they aren’t billion-dollar money-making factories anymore, and it’s the best thing that could happen to movie lovers.
Superhero movies have dominated Hollywood for decades. The studio system has dedicated every dollar to making them, with the biggest possible budgets, the biggest stars, and all the money available for marketing.
They did that because they made money, almost all of them. It’s why we have movies like Venom, Shazam, Hancock, and Suicide Squad. These weren’t big properties people were clamoring for, but they were superhero movies, so people went to see them. Because, like cowboy movies before them, people went to see all superhero movies. They cost a lot of money to make, and they made money in return. It was a no-lose formula.
Money isn’t infinite, though, so to do this, Hollywood had narrowed its investment focus. That meant someone pitching a new disaster movie idea that needed a big budget, probably wasn’t going to get any money to make their vision. If you had an amazing idea to start a new action franchise, you probably weren’t going to get the money for that either. It was all going to superheroes.
So the audience hunger for superhero movies was satiated, Hollywood made a lot of money, but other ideas were shelved. It’s been all superheroes all the time because they were seen as sure-thing profit machines. It’s debatable whether that was ever true, but that was the perception. Now it’s not.
Superhero interest peaked with Avengers: Endgame, and it’s been slipping since then. This year, the slide became more obvious. Four big superhero movies were released this year, and only Superman didn’t underperform. Yet even Superman will end up only as a modest hit, and while Fantastic Four will make money, it won’t make anything like historical Marvel numbers.
Last year’s results looked deceptively better because of the mega-money earned by Deadpool and Wolverine, but if you take that movie’s crazy $1.3 billion box office out of the equation, it was largely a superhero disaster.
2024 Superhero Movie Box Office
- Venom: The Last Dance | $478 million
- Madame Web | $100 million
- Kraven the Hunter | $62 million
Those failures last year were easily dismissed because they were all three objectively terrible movies. This summer is particularly noteworthy because Superman and Fantastic Four: First Steps, unlike most of the superhero films released in 2024, are both good movies. However, good reviews and good word of mouth have only been enough to earn them $500 – $700 million on budgets over $400 million.
Superhero movies are no longer money-printing machines. They’re like any other kind of movie again. That means Hollywood will likely go back to trying other types of movies.
Variety made the 1990s one of the best decades of blockbuster cinema. With superheroes removed as obstacles, we could be in for another blockbuster renaissance. Like cowboy movies before them, superhero movies are done as an instant hit formula. Hollywood has lost its crutch, and movies are about to get awesome again.
