---
type: source
title: "MCU Franchise Fatigue 2025: Box Office Down 60-80% from Endgame — Franchise IP in Structural Decline"
author: "SlashFilm / CBR / FilmSpaceAfrica"
url: https://www.slashfilm.com/2040861/marvel-2025-box-office-mcu-fallen-grace/
date: 2025-12
domain: entertainment
secondary_domains: []
format: article
status: processed
processed_by: clay
processed_date: 2026-04-29
priority: high
tags: [MCU, franchise-fatigue, box-office, IP-decline, Marvel, Hollywood]
intake_tier: research-task
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

**MCU 2025 worldwide box office totals:**
- Fantastic Four: First Steps — $520.5M
- Captain America: Brave New World — $413.6M
- Thunderbolts* — $382.4M
- **Total 2025: ~$1.316B**

**Comparison:** Deadpool & Wolverine (2024 single film): ~$1.338B — more than all three 2025 MCU films combined. The MCU's 2025 total is 60-80% below Avengers: Endgame's $2.8B.

**The sentiment data:** Social data across X, Reddit, and TikTok shows clear sentiment shift: "Fans no longer trust that every MCU title is worth the price of admission."

**The structural analysis:** "The MCU hasn't truly created a new franchise since Endgame arrived, and superhero movies are no longer king to audiences, with 2025 reminding us of the power of movie stars, fresh IP, and animation."

**The CNBC January 2026 report:** "All of the top franchises that have powered the past 25 years at the multiplex—Harry Potter, Fast & Furious, Jurassic World, Star Wars, Bond, etc.—are all on fumes, wrapping up, attempting a new era or in the shop."

**The Ankler analysis:** "Big IP Franchises in Crisis, Part I" — examining Marvel, DC, Bond, Mission: Impossible as simultaneous franchise fatigue across multiple studio properties.

## Agent Notes
**Why this matters:** PSKY just paid $110B to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery's DC, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings library. The MCU data is the canary in the coal mine for all legacy franchise IP: the most successful franchise in cinema history is showing 60-80% decline from peak, and the structural cause ("fans no longer trust that every MCU title is worth the price of admission") applies equally to DC, Star Trek, and other franchise IP. PSKY may have bought the franchise community at exactly its most expensive and most fragile moment.

**What surprised me:** The Deadpool & Wolverine comparison is the sharpest data point — a single film (2024) earned more than all three 2025 MCU releases combined. The magnitude of decline is more severe than I had estimated.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Counter-evidence that certain franchise IP categories are GROWING. The only exceptions noted were "movie stars, fresh IP, and animation" — which actually SUPPORTS the community-creation thesis (animation = Pixar-style originals, not franchise sequels; fresh IP = what community-first models are building).

**KB connections:**
- [[proxy inertia is the most reliable predictor of incumbent failure because current profitability rationally discourages pursuit of viable futures]] — MCU optimized for Phase 1-3 success when environment changed
- [[five factors determine the speed and extent of disruption including quality definition change and ease of incumbent replication]] — quality redefinition from "franchise coherence" to "fresh, event-worthy"
- [[information cascades create power law distributions in culture because consumers use popularity as a quality signal when choice is overwhelming]] — when popularity signal breaks (MCU titles no longer worth admission price), the cascade reverses

**Extraction hints:**
- New claim: "Legacy franchise IP (MCU, DC, Harry Potter, Bond) is experiencing simultaneous structural decline as Gen Z preference for original content breaks the franchise trust cascade" — with specific box office evidence
- Update to [[media disruption follows two sequential phases as distribution moats fall first and creation moats fall second]]: the creation moat is now falling AND the franchise-IP content moat is weakening simultaneously — two disruptions in progress

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[the media attractor state is community-filtered IP with AI-collapsed production costs where content becomes a loss leader for the scarce complements of fandom community and ownership]]
WHY ARCHIVED: Concrete evidence that legacy franchise IP is losing its community hold — the primary counter-thesis to community-created new IP
EXTRACTION HINT: Focus on the structural cause ("fans no longer trust every MCU title") not just the revenue numbers — this is about community disengagement from legacy IP, which is the precise gap community-owned IP is positioned to fill
