The Marvels Suddenly Changed Its Title for Chinese Release, and Here's Why
As The Marvels’ release is drawing closer, the MCU decided to rename the movie for the Chinese market. What’s its new title and why was it needed in the first place?
Marvel needs The Marvels to succeed.
After the overwhelming success of Avengers: Endgame, the studio has released nine big-screen movies, and only one of them managed to make it past ten figures globally. Others were pretty successful, too, with the smallest haul being the $622M of Ant-Man and the Wasp, but that’s quite a low average for Marvel’s ambitions.
Considering the recent small-screen failures of Marvel (yes, Secret Invasion, we’re looking at you) and the overall backdrop of superhero fatigue and complaints about the quality of the latest projects, the MCU wants its next big-screen venture — The Marvels — to follow the success of Captain Marvel which earned over $1.1B.
So, amid the recent news about The Marvels being the shortest movie of the studio and having a suspiciously modest production budget, Marvel decided to take an extra step to ensure the movie’s financial success. This extra step, of course, involved… changing The Marvels’ title for the Chinese market. Wait, what?
A movie called The Marvels will never be released in China; instead, there will be — lo and behold — Captain Marvel 2!
But why?
The thing is, the first Captain Marvel performed really well at the Chinese market. Out of the $704.5M the movie earned globally, over $154M came from China — meaning that Captain Marvel owes roughly 22% of its global haul to that market. This is a huge percentage, and apparently, the MCU really wants to repeat that trick.
By using the name of Captain Marvel’s standalone movie, the studio hopes to attract more viewers in China since the popularity of the first installment was undeniable in the country. Though it’s naive to hope for a bigger haul from the Chinese market this time, even if one-third of the local Captain Marvel audience didn’t like it, it’s still a potential $100M to add to the new movie’s success.
So yeah, there are no The Marvels for China — and this might just work marvels for Marvel. Sorry for the mouthful.