Culture news Aquaman 2 may be a failure at the cinema, but it will never do worse than this Marvel film!
Released in theaters on December 20, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is not a hit at the cinema, like most of the superhero films of 2023. However, it does better than other DC Comics feature films and especially better than this MCU production.
Five years after the release of the first Aquaman in theaters, its sequel arrives at the very end of 2023, while the year has been catastrophic for superhero films. So, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom has the heavy responsibility of bringing an end to the DCEU, the DC Comics cinematic universe that began in 2013 with Man of Steel. The franchise will undergo a reboot to be relaunched in 2025 with Superman: Legacy directed by James Gunn who is now the head of DC Studios. Unfortunately for the company, we cannot say that this latest film lives up to expectations.
Aquaman 2 marks the end of the DCEU
At present, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom raked in a worldwide box office of $334 million. To go into detail, 100 million come from the United States and 234 from internationally. These figures are not exceptional for a production of this caliber, DC Studios can take solace in the fact that these are better results than The Flash for example which only brought in $270 million. In the long term, Aquaman 2 could even surpass Black Adam which only grossed $390 million. As observed by the site dedicated to DC Comics news DC Planet, the film should break even if it reaches $400 million. If so, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom would be Warner’s highest-grossing DCEU film since… the first Aquaman in 2018.
Globally, we can say that 2023 is a fairly catastrophic year for Warner since three of the four films released so far are failures, namely Shazam! Rage of the Gods, The Flash and Blue Beetle. It remains to be seen whether Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will recoup its costs. In the meantime, one thing is certain, which is that Aquaman 2 will have done better than the sequel to a 2019 MCU film, namely The Marvels. In total, Captain Marvel’s latest adventures only grossed $205,980,025 million, which barely covers the film’s budget and doesn’t even make it profitable. After a disastrous 2023 for superhero films, 2024 will be much calmer since on the MCU side, only Deadpool 3 is planned, while DC Comics will be discreet until the release of Superman Legacy in 2025.