The MCU's Downward Spiral: Why 2026 Won't Save Marvel

Intro

I'm a huge Marvel fan ever since I was a kid, and my introduction to this world came with "Spider-Man: The Animated Series" from 1994, which still holds up today and is considered the best Spider-Man version on screen.

So when Marvel (and later Disney) started its Cinematic Universe back in 2008 with Nick Fury telling Tony Stark – "I'm here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative" – I was all in.

Eighteen years later, the golden age of superhero movies is still here. DC launched its new universe under James Gunn with "Superman" in 2025, shows like "Invincible" are getting great reviews, we got a Sopranos-style show like "Penguin," and Marvel is still going strong.

2026 is going to be a huge year for Marvel, with only 2 movies, but what movies. In June we're going to get the 4th Spider-Man movie starring Tom Holland, which IMO will make over $1B.

In December, we're going to get one of the most hyped films, "Avengers: Doomsday" with RDJ as Doctor Doom, Steve Rogers, the Avengers, X-Men and Fantastic Four all in one movie. And while this movie is coming as a desperate move from Marvel (look at the Jonathan Majors scandal), this movie is going to make $2B easily.

So 2026 is going to be a great year for Marvel and Disney with around $3B in box office results from only 2 movies. But the truth is, 2026 is only an irregular observation, and the truth is: Marvel is in bad shape, the studio isn’t getting back to the horst after the amazing success of the “Infinity Saga” which ended with “Avengers: Endgame”.

Data Used & Assumptions

For this analysis, I used the budget and box office results of each MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) movie from "Iron Man" in 2008 to "Fantastic Four: First Steps" in 2025. All data was pulled from Box Office Mojo and The Numbers.

If you're new to Marvel, then you need to know that the MCU movies work in phases. In each phase there are a few movies, and ideally, each phase will have an "Avengers" movie to conclude the phase. The first 3 phases are called "The Infinity Saga" (Thanos), and phases 4-6 are called "The Multiverse Saga" (Doctor Doom).

Another point to take into account is the "ensemble" movies, which are usually very huge, making over $1B easily at the box office, and aren't the "regular" movies we usually get. Films like "Avengers," "Spider-Man: No Way Home," "Deadpool & Wolverine," and "Civil War" are skewing the results. So in parts of the analysis, they will be excluded. Another movie that will be excluded is "Black Widow," which was released during the Covid pandemic in 2021.

As for the box office results, I will use both the domestic (US only) results and the global ones. The reason is that from domestic theaters, a much larger share of the ticket price goes to the studio than in global markets.

One last thing: for a movie to be profitable, we usually multiply the budget by 2.5 to take into account the movie theater's part of the ticket and the marketing budget. This is a standard industry multiplier.

The Analysis

Marvel is very focused on its "phases" method, and it's easier to identify trend changes in it. The "Infinity Saga" story was in phases 1-3, and the "Multiverse Saga" is currently in phases 4-6. I'll start by showing the average box office results per phase. One time for all movies and one time with the excluded ones I mentioned before.

The trend is clear: once the "Infinity Saga" was completed, MCU movies are showing a steady decrease in box office results, both in the domestic and global markets. By the time Phase 5 was completed, the average MCU movie is making similar amounts to the first days of the studio, when people didn't care about characters like Iron Man or Captain America.

The next step, was looking at the actual profit of the movies, which as a general rule a movie need to make 2.5 times its budget to break even.

When looking at the average profit, you can see the amazing growth of phases 1-3 with all movies and excluding ensemble ones. And then, once phase 4 hits, there is a significant drop, and phase 5 even shows average negative profit. Out of 7 MCU movies that have lost money for the studio, 6 of them were part of phases 4-5.

We can clearly see a trend here that, after "Avengers: Endgame," Marvel just can't get back to the momentum it had. Furthermore, the trend is just going downward. This trend is even more pronounced when taking into account that the movies from a decade ago haven't been updated to include inflation.

Another way I looked into this was cumulative growth. With streaming becoming more dominant, so much so that even Disney (which owns Marvel) has its own streaming service, maybe the main issue is that movies just aren't spending enough time in theaters.

So I checked the cumulative box office of each phase every week, showing the box office growth over time. For this analysis, I only had the domestic data.

The X-axis shows the number of weeks since release, and the Y-axis is the average cumulative box office results.

Here we're seeing that Phase 5, which is the most recent one, is performing like Phase 1 (from 2008), and its incline between week 1 and weeks 2-3 is the lowest out of all the phases.

The Verdict

As I wrote at the start, I love the MCU and I will be first in line for their 2026 movies. But I also can't ignore the fact that based on any calculation and metric, the movies are making less and less money as time goes by.

Marvel is aware of this problem. Recent reports are coming out saying they plan to be less focused on TV shows, making only 2-3 movies per year and going back to characters and stories more similar to their earlier phases.

But when people and newspapers say "Marvel Is Back" after the box office results of 2026, keep in mind this is only a smoke screen hiding a much larger problem.