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“Avengers, Assemble!” As iconic this line is, the studios behind the creation of such marvelous content, If I am being a little cheesy, is Marvel Studios.
From children to adults, this fascinating world that one can be caught up in for days is the Marvel world, a sort of dimension in which characters have been growing and fighting evil forever and we choose to love these characters and invest our time and effort in the movies.
What we at Corp epitome started to wonder is whether Marvel is only earning through the massive box office collections or is there something else to it.?
While we went in search to get answers to this very question we stumbled upon various facts and theories through which Marvel Studios can earn money.
In 2014 Marvel Studios had two films released, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy. Their North American grosses were $259,766,572 and $333,176,600, respectively. Worldwide grosses were $714,421,503 and $773,312,399, respectively. DVD, Blu-Ray, Digital, streaming, and Cable money would also need to be added to the Marvel Studios total. Marvel Studios has grossed over $16.4B in worldwide box office from only 19 movies in ten years. This includes 6 movies that have surpassed the billion-dollar mark worldwide box office.
In the rise of Covid or even before, the OTT platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ started to have an audience that was ready to subscribe to their medium of entertainment, none of them predicted COVID and the massive profits that were awaiting them. Marvel Studios gave forth its products of movies and web series to be hosted and streamed on these platforms especially Disney+ as Walt Disney owns Marvel Studios.
Even before covid, the movies were streamed thousands of times and Series such as Loki, Wanda vision which were released in the Covid era went on to be exemplary in their performances on Disney+ which brought in heaps of profit to Marvel.
When you love a superhero you go to every length to acquire a piece of clothing or accessory that has a symbol or a line that represents your love for the movie. The attention to Marvel Studios increased after Avengers, the first superhero collaborative movie which went on to make the world grasping for more created a huge demand for its merchandise as in that time it was a buzzing trend, and guess what Marvel did just that. There were T-shirts, Watches, Caps, Rings, and whatnot that went on to be ginormous hits among the fans.
Today, Marvel earns heavily through merchandising its movies. Marvel had 34.38% of the market share. That’s $321.45 million. Licensing, incidentally, is where the real money comes in. In 2013, just for Avengers and Spider-man merchandise, the revenue was $1.625 billion.
In 2014, total North American comic book sales (periodicals, trades, and digital) added up to $935 million. The entire U.S. comic industry, where Marvel Comics is a part of, has an industry size of about a billion dollars per year.
The comic book business has been changing for decades. Through the 1960s you could buy comic books at any drugstore, many supermarkets, most convenience stores, and all newsstands.
Newsstands are long-gone and none of those other stores carries comic books. Some bookstores do but those are dying also. Most comic books are sold from specialty stores, As of around 2000, comic books stopped making any real money. The money came from packaging story arcs as a graphic novel and selling it that way. The comic books were just a way of defraying the costs of production. But the graphic novels were sold in book stores and we’re back to those being a dying business. But digital comic books being a growing trend has made up a good revenue for Marvel.
The facts can’t be denied that marvel earns massive numbers through movies, it has been a phenomenon in recent times when Spiderman No way home bought audiences in the covid era out of their homes to go watch a movie when movie makers are still struggling to get people back to theatres.
Here is the data of approximate figures of each movie in each Marvel's Cinematic Universes Phase.
Phase 1:
Iron Man - $318,412,101
The Incredible Hulk - $134,806,913
Iron Man 2 - $312,433,331
Thor - $181,030,624
Captain America: The First Avenger - $176,654,505
The Avengers - $623,357,910
Total Gross in Phase 1 - $1,746,695,384, or approx $1.75 billion
Phase 2:
Iron Man 3 - $409,013,994
Thor: The Dark World - $206,362,140
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - $259,766,572
Guardians of the Galaxy - $333,176,600
Avengers: Age of Ultron (side note: such a badass name) - $459,005,868
Ant Man - $180,202,163
Total Gross in Phase 2 - $1,847,527,337 or approx $1.85 billion
Phase 3:
Captain America: Civil War - $408,084,349
Doctor Strange - $232,641,920
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - $389,813,101
Spider-Man: Homecoming - $334,201,140
Thor: Ragnarok - $315,058,289
Black Panther - $699,251,067
Avengers: Infinity War (thankfully for Marvel, their profits were immune to Thanos' snap) - $647,897,699
Total Gross in Phase 3 - $3,026,947,565 or approx. $3 billion
The list goes on but we do get a synapsis of what Marvel is today.
The love of Cinema will not be out soon nor do we think Marvel will.
By the way who is excited for Doctor Strange Madness in the Multiverse?
I am sure millions of us!