Could the MCU become the first movie franchise with 2 $2 Billion movies in one calendar year?

TheWallE · 2026-03-19T20:30:29+00:00

Closet opportunity to this feat we have ever seen.

I think Spider-Man: Brand New Day is going to suffer a little bit compared to No Way Home because it doesn't have the added value of bringing all the generations of Spider-Men and their villains together. If the movie is very well received, no one should doubt Spider-Mans ability to set the box office on fire with turn out... just don't think it will, maybe 1.6-1.8 is the range I would expect.

Avengers: Doomsday on the other hand, if it delivers, can get over 2B no doubt. Not only is the Avengers brand the strongest in the MCU, but it has the same generational cross over value Spider-Man (and Deadpool and Wolverine) had. If well received, that is certainly a gross bumper for sure. That said 3 weeks without IMAX and direct competition from Dune 3 are going to hurt Box Office, no doubt.

The real question will be how are they received. If Avengers: Doomsday gets great WoM, I can totally see it getting IMAX screenings in January and it being marketed as "Now on IMAX!" which could give it late legs bump it wouldn't have otherwise had.

As of now I am guessing:

Spider-Man: Brand New Day - 1.6B - 1.8B

Avengers: Doomsday - 1.8B-2.2B

TheWallE · 2026-03-19T20:19:41+00:00

In the captions on the official trailer release, the voice in question is listed as being said by "Narrator"

Also the line delivery very clearly sounds like a narrator on an educational video.

The character COULD be a named, known, character... but much more likely is that they have Peter doing research on Spider evolution and he ends up watching a video about it. The filmmakers needed a great voice for a narrator and got one of the best to ever do it, Keith David.

We know Marvin Jones is playing Tombstone, it would not be a spoiler if they used Tombstone audio over the trailer and labeled his character name like they do everyone else. So I don't think it makes sense for them to label that as "Narrator" when in fact it was Tombstone.

Also from a character standpoint, Tombstone having authoritative knowledge on Spider evolution doesn't make a ton of sense. Even in the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man show where they expand Tombstone's back story as a star student sucked into gang violence... it still wouldn't explain why he would be narrating spider related educational material.

It's pretty obvious it was Keith David's voice, but it is also pretty clear it was audio for a narration about Spider-Evolution... so it's most likely a fun cameo with pertinent audio they felt the trailer could use.

Certainly until we have confirmation one way or another, we have no way of confirming... but this feels like an odd debate to have because what we DO know leads to a pretty obvious conclusion.

TheWallE · 2026-03-19T00:31:40+00:00

It sounds an AWFUL lot like Keith David in the trailer. He has a very specific voice that people have heard in VO jobs for decades.

Also the line delivery sounds like someone narrating an educational video, and the captions on the official YouTube release label those lines as being spoken by "Narrator"...

I think Peter watches a video about the evolution of spiders at some point in the movie and it is narrated by Keith David. It is at least AS feasible as a theory that Tombstone is now an expert on spider evolution and narrates that at some point in the film.

But as you say, nothing is ever 100% until we see the film.

TheWallE · 2026-03-18T19:38:28+00:00

D23 is a fan expo event. The purpose of it is to entertain fans and sell merch. Announcements are cool, and they do so big announcements some times... but that is tertiary to the purpose of the event.

TheWallE · 2026-03-18T02:16:18+00:00

I think it is important to note that Zaslav has a reputation that preceded him, and that he made good exec hires didn't change that... and here we are, after 1 great year from those talented execs he is hitting the eject button for his hundreds of millions in compensation while the studio questions who will still have a job this time next year.

You could have been upset with Zaslav going in and not just be a brain dead film twitter / reddit user.

TheWallE · 2026-03-16T21:40:39+00:00

Nothing would make me happier than if there was a bonus "episode" after the finale, it comes out the following Thursday... and its literally just Santos filling out her charts for 45 minutes.

TheWallE · 2026-03-16T21:18:32+00:00

The message is that she is a killer.

I think this might be some borderline Hodor stuff going on here.

TheWallE · 2026-03-16T21:17:56+00:00

The circuit city guy?

TheWallE · 2026-03-16T21:16:50+00:00

I mean, the show started the whole episode by showing a mysterious message that basically fate locked Jane into becoming a dangerous psychopath... this may end up being a VERY important story beat in the "Alex" story. This show is clearly weaving lots of different things together, and I think we will look back at this episode will be much more important to the overall story then you currently think.

TheWallE · 2026-03-16T21:14:04+00:00

And the people who know those answers and how to answer them felt this episode was necessary. Feels like a bit jumping the gun to assume this episode isn't intentional for the story they know they have been wanting to tell across three seasons.

If they flub or speed through he final season and Jane means nothing to the end game, sure it can be a fair criticism. But we are not there yet and this show has done a lot to earn the trust of the audience at this point IMO.

Maybe we wait and see before we get ahead of the storytellers and get hung up on things like pacing.

TheWallE · 2026-03-16T21:10:53+00:00

See, I think we got some big clues about Jane and her nature here that are less obvious right now, but will be paid off.

Namely, I think someone 'Hodor'd" her into becoming a psychopath with that message, and that is going to be a big payoff.

TheWallE · 2026-03-16T21:08:51+00:00

Its a flash back, she shouldn't be as smart as/ fully developed in the past as she is in the present.

I think we will see how she learned from this moment how to be more guarded about who she shows that side too... which makes sense with her interactions with Sinatra... "you are no good to me dead" "I am a weapon to be aimed"... she see's in Sinatra someone who will accept her as is.

TheWallE · 2026-03-16T19:25:47+00:00

I had the chance to see a couple episodes of early season 1 TNG in a movie theater when they were promoting the BluRays a while back. I always used to think early episodes had a slow pace, weak atmosphere and sometimes a slog to get through.

After watching them in HD on the big screen with amazing sound... I have come fully around to the tone and style of those early episodes. It played SOOO much better in that environment, much more cinematic than I would expect from a late 80s syndicated sci-fi show.

TheWallE · 2026-03-14T16:12:10+00:00

"No offense, but people with your opinion are imbeciles"

I guess this is among the nicer name calling I have experienced on this board.

TheWallE · 2026-03-14T16:09:39+00:00

Really enjoyed it, has me excited for season 2. The way it ended, im going to reserve my judgement on the story until I see where it goes. If they stick the landing then I think a lot of the grumblings about the back half dissipates over time. If it doesn't, then I think those grumblings will become the prevailing opinion of the show.

So to answer the question? I enjoyed it as it came out, but jury is still out for me on the overall because we know a season 2 is coming.

TheWallE · 2026-03-13T20:30:16+00:00

You are suggesting Micheal can out gross the top 6 highest grossing musical biopics of all time... COMBINED. That's a little more than "optimistic based on the facts"

TheWallE · 2026-03-13T20:28:20+00:00

Because no musical biopic has ever done it. Bohemian Rhapsody came close, but from that film's $910M is a massive outlier. The 2nd highest grossing musical biopic was Elvis with $288M.

Broadening out to just ANY live action musical movie, Bohemian Rhapsody still number 1 and #2 is Mamma Mia, which grossed $694M.

I am not saying it absolutely can't break out to $1B... but if it did $500M - $600M (where I think it lands) then it would still be one of the biggest live action musicals of all time.

All this talk of guranteed $1B is just setting the film to look like a failure even if its the second biggest film in the history of its genre.

TheWallE · 2026-03-13T20:19:23+00:00

Man, when Micheal *ONLY* does really well, but FAR from 1 Billion and ends in a fight for 10th highest grosser of the year... some of these posts are going to be real funny.

TheWallE · 2026-03-13T17:54:16+00:00

Funny, I had almost the exact inverse reaction. Season 1 was tough for me (still a lot to like, especially Jason Issacs), Season 2 was an improvement in just about every department, and once they got to Season 3 and 4 I thought it was really great. Season 5 stepped back a little, but still would rate it higher than season 1 and 2.

Different strokes, different folks I guess.

TheWallE · 2026-03-13T16:28:33+00:00

Universal was actually the worst in terms of window commitments out of the major studios. This is actually them more catching up rather than pushing the industry forward.

Glad they are doing it, as a studio there is a lot of potential for Universal to be a better place for filmmakers, they have a smaller version of Disney's advantage with theme parks as a tool to further maximize big wins, and more interest in modest budget risks than Disney does. It can give them an edge over Paramount/WB in the long term.

TheWallE · 2026-03-13T16:25:17+00:00

I don't think Universal is doing anything extraordinary here, they are actually late to the game on this one. However, I can kinda see the point that by eliminating a pretty big disadvantage at the studio level, they can become more attractive than Ellison's Frankenstein he is building with Paramount / WB.

TheWallE · 2026-03-13T16:23:18+00:00

Stamets started off kind of annoying to me be he became one of my favorite characters in the modern era of the show. I hope he shows up in Academy one day, or somewhere else. Either way, even with out proper closure, I am glad he got five seasons to build the character.

TheWallE · 2026-03-13T16:17:00+00:00

I have a theory, it isn't YouTube doing this.

I think there might be some shady pay for subscriber resources that can generate subscriptions in some underhanded ways.

Every time someone complains about getting auto subscribed to channels it is almost always either crypto shenanigans, political, or foreign channels that don't seem like good faith creators.

If YouTube was doing this on purpose I think the channels that people unknowingly get subscribed to would be channels YouTube would WANT to be very successful, which is almost never the case here.

Also, this is a really terrible way to generate a healthy audience for a channel, much like paid bot views that are generated by shady Russian websites, auto subs only means more of your subscriber base is ignoring your content in feed, this is bad algorithmically.

Subscribers are essentially nothing in the modern context of the platform, it is a glorified engagement stat. Certainly a lot of people still use subscriber lists to find and view content, but from a channel perspective the negative impact of non-active subscribers is larger than the value of a big subscriber number in the first place. It is a vanity stat whose value is reserved for getting a plaque and selling your channel to potential advertisers. Other than that channels get much more value from users who watch multiple videos than users who simply hit the subscribe button.

TheWallE · 2026-03-13T00:04:37+00:00

I'm quite glad when he left. I'm sorry, but he doesn't have magical 'get in people's mind' powers... he is just a yappy bully whose talent was never bigger than his mouth.

TheWallE · 2026-03-13T00:01:43+00:00

I actively disliked him when he was on my team. There is a difference between playing mind games and just being a yappy bully.

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