Stephen King is not a Marvel movie fan, but that didn’t stop him from expressing frustration over the “adolescent fanboys” who are taking pleasure in “The Marvels” flopping at the box office. The latest Marvel tentpole, with a reported budget in the $225 million range, is a box office disaster after opening to $47 million, the lowest start for a film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The global debut wasn’t much better at $68 million. It appears some toxic trolls have been celebrating the underwhelming opening specifically because the story centers on three female superheroes and is directed by a woman. King is having none of that.
“I don’t go to MCU movies, don’t care for them, but I find this barely masked gloating over the low box office for ‘The Marvels’ very unpleasant,” King wrote on X/Twitter to his 7.1 million followers. “Why gloat over failure?”
He added in a separate post, “Some of the rejection of ‘The Marvels’ may be adolescent fanboy hate. You know, ‘Yuck! GIRLS!'”
Larson has been public about having to deal with toxic social media trolls since her casting as Captain Marvel was announced years ago. When her standalone movie opened in 2019, it was review bombed by misogynistic fans who wanted to bring down the film’s community rating on websites such as Rotten Tomatoes and IMdB without even having seen it.
“She’s not going to let any of that stuff destroy her,” Laron’s Marvel co-star Samuel L. Jackson told Rolling Stoneearlier this year. “These incel dudes who hate strong women, or the fact that she’s a feminist who has an opinion and expressed it? Everybody wants people to be who they want them to be. She is who she is, and she’s genuinely that.”
The box office numbers for “The Marvels” are of considerable note given Marvel’s rough year. The movie is the second major Marvel tentpole to underperform following “Ant-Man and the Was: Quantumania,” which only grossed $476 million worldwide earlier this year. But even that movie opened big with $106 million and then failed to leg out, proving word of mouth just wasn’t there. In the case of “The Marvels,” it underperformed out of the gate.
“The Marvels” is now playing in theaters nationwide from Disney.
I don’t go to MCU movies, don’t care for them, but I find this barely masked gloating over the low box office for THE MARVELS very unpleasant. Why gloat over failure?
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) November 12, 2023
Some of the rejection of THE MARVELS may be adolescent fanboy hate. You know, "Yuck! GIRLS!"
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) November 13, 2023
