Marvel's meteoric rise: We chart the rise of Marvel, the biggest movie franchise of all time
Next week Marvel will premiere Black Widow, a superhero movie that will become the 24th in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Iron Man kicked off the series back in 2008.
Marvel's meteoric rise
In 2007 Star Wars and James Bond were roughly tied as the biggest grossing movie franchises at the box office (US, inflation adjusted). It would have been pretty hard to imagine a franchise starting in 2008 that would go on to eclipse them both — but that is exactly what happened with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The chart above, which we've recreated thanks to data from The Numbers, shows how Disney's $4.2bn acquisition of Marvel has paid off handsomely since 2009. Since the deal the house of mouse has churned out Marvel movies like clockwork, at a rate of roughly 2 a year, for much of the last decade — racking up almost $10bn at the US box office and more than $20bn around the world.
Everything's a sequel now
As well as reinvigorating the superhero genre, the Marvel universe has also become the poster child for the trend of "sequelitis". That's the idea that sequels (or prequels), remakes and spin-offs have become increasingly prevalent in Hollywood and the cinematic world more generally.
Getting hard data on "sequelitis" depends a lot on how you define a sequel or a remake. For example 2019's movie Joker could easily be a stand-alone movie on its own, or be thought of as part of the Batman franchise (which it is in the chart above).
One simple test is just to look at the most popular 10 movies of each year. Taking 2019 as an example (which was the last "normal year" for cinema) is pretty telling. Every single movie in the top 10 is either a direct sequel (Avengers: Endgame, Toy Story 4, Frozen 2), a remake (Aladdin, Lion King) or a spin-off (Joker).
