Aquaman 2 embarasses The Marvels at the Box office with numbers that nobody imagined

In a move that no one saw coming, Aquaman 2 is doing decent business at the box office. While it's still nothing to brag about, it has already outgrossed its contemporaries in the genre like The Marvels and Blue Beetles. For a DC it looks it's going to be the company's highest-grossing film that came out in 2023.

It's quite an interesting development in the case of Aquaman 2. The film came out right at the end of a cinematic universe that was already dying a slow death, and for it to outgross the other films in its genre like this is an interesting feat. With the bad year DC has had, for a film to recoup its development budget surely comes across as a good thing.

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Aquaman 2 outgrosses The Marvels' entire box office run in 2 weeks

Made on a reported budget of $205 million to $215 million, Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom has already grossed $269.3 million at the worldwide box office. In comparison, The Marvels grossed a total of $197 million during its theatrical run, which makes it one of Marvel Studios' lowest-grossing films of all time.

One could make an argument that The Marvels was heavily impacted by the SAG-AFTRA actors' strike as well, as the film came out right at the tail-end of it. This definitely might have impacted the movie as the actors themselves weren't able to promote the film, but at the same time, 2023 particularly hasn't been a great year for superhero movies.

While James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was able to gross almost $845.6 million during its box office run, other highly anticipated superhero movies like The Flash and Blue Beetle barely managed to make anything. The Flash in particular carried a reported budget of $300 million but only grossed $270 million at the worldwide box office. In the same case, The Marvels carried a reported budget of $270 million as well, which certainly impacted its theatrical legs.

With Aquaman 2 ending the DCEU, one could assume that fans wanted to show up for the franchise's conclusion which has had quite a mixed reception overall. Aquaman 2 opened with mixed to negative reviews as well from critics and currently sits at 35% on Rotten Tomatoes.

While the box office numbers may come as a surprise for this movie, it still doesn't live up to the standard of the first which went on to become the highest-grossing DC film of all time. Aquaman grossed a total of $1.152 billion back in 2018, a feat no other DC movie has been able to achieve since then.

Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom stars Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry, who after facing an attack from Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), enlists the help of his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) so that he can put a stop to the villain before he ends up resurrecting King Kordax. Aquaman 2 is playing in theatres right now.