Marvel Movies Will Dominate the 2014 Box Office
Captain America: The Winter Soldier seems destined to be among 2014's box office leaders. Sources: Marvel Entertainment, Facebook.
Get ready for a three-peat, Marvel fans. Judging by today's numbers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is on track to be tops at the 2014 box office.
Think what that might mean. Marvel's The Avengers ruled the 2012 box office with a $1.5 billion haul. Iron Man 3 tops this year's charts. A similar win for Winter Soldier would secure Marvel's status as a top-tier Hollywood hitmaker and cement Bob Iger's legacy among the best CEOs in Walt Disney history.
But are the numbers really that good? I'll admit the process is subjective. First, I scoured the 2014 release schedule and singled out likely losers. I then picked what I expect to be the top 10 earners among the wide-release films that remained and organized them by social popularity. Here are the results:
Movie | Facebook Likes | Twitter Followers | YouTube Trailer Views | Rotten Tomatoes Followers |
Captain America: The Winter Soldier | 9.1 million | 37,762 | 85,672 want to see it | |
X-Men: Days of Future Past | 9.5 million | 37,950 | 79,065 want to see it | |
The Hobbit: There and Back Again | 3.9 million | 223,216 | No trailer as of this writing | 75,006 want to see it |
Transformers: Age of Extinction | 27 million | 92,903 | Trailer due to air during Super Bowl | 74,165 want to see it |
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 | 6.9 million | 123,437 | 67,753 want to see it | |
How to Train Your Dragon 2 | 5.1 million | 371 | 61,761 want to see it | |
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 | 12.2 million | 1,076,921 | No trailer as of this writing | 57,057 want to see it |
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes | 748,702 | 7,080 | First trailer due on Dec. 18 | 35,912 want to see it |
Rio 2 | 5.3 million | 2,845 | 30,130 want to see it | |
Guardians of the Galaxy | 53,506 | No official account | No trailer as of this writing | 23,204 want to see it |
Sources: Facebook, Rotten Tomatoes, Twitter, YouTube.
Winter Soldier ranks highest on Rotten Tomatoes, where more than 85,000 users say they want to see the movie. There are 23.4 million views of its trailer on YouTube while more than 9.1 million "like" Cap on Facebook. I'd expect all these totals to grow exponentially when Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns next year with episodes that tease a movie tie-in.
But can we really trust social data as a predictor of financial success? Research by Adobe Systems finds that movies which experience "social buzz" ahead of release tend to outperform at the box office. Winter Soldier already looks like that sort of film.
So does The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and X-Men: Days of Future Past. Just look at the millions of views for each movie's trailer. That's no doubt great news for Sony , which is producing a fast-growing family of Spidey films, and 21st Century Fox, which is building its own interconnected version of the Marvel Universe starring the X-Men and Fantastic Four. Disney, meanwhile, gets to collect producer fees for Fox's X-Men films and merchandise sales tied to Sony's Spider-Man productions.
Several other studios also stand to cash in next year. Time Warner gets the third installment in The Hobbit series, which started off earning $1 billion and could get close to that again with the just-released sequel, The Desolation of Smaug. DreamWorks Animation gets another shot at a blockbuster in How to Train Your Dragon 2 while Lions Gate goes for $1 billion with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1.
Still, I like Marvel in the 2014 box office race. Why? Even if Winter Soldier isn't next year's biggest film, or Guardians of the Galaxy fails (here's why I think it won't), Marvel has never brought four buzzworthy properties to screen in a single year. That changes in 2014, and Disney investors should be better off for it.
Now it's your turn to weigh in. What is your pick for the top movie of 2014? Which Marvel movie do you expect to do best? Leave a comment in the box below to let us know what you think.
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The article Marvel Movies Will Dominate the 2014 Box Office originally appeared on Fool.com.
Fool contributor Tim Beyers is a member of the Motley Fool Rule Breakers stock-picking team and the Motley Fool Supernova Odyssey I mission. He owned shares of Walt Disney and Time Warner at the time of publication. Check out Tim's web home and portfolio holdings or connect with him on Google+, Tumblr, or Twitter, where he goes by @milehighfool. You can also get his insights delivered directly to your RSS reader.The Motley Fool recommends Adobe Systems, DreamWorks Animation, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool owns shares of Walt Disney. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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