New To The Quorum: MADAME WEB

There are lots of mixed signals out there in the superhero universe. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL 3 did very well. SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE did even better. But ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA, THE FLASH, MORBIUS and BLACK ADAM did, well, less well. 

Looking at the upcoming slate, the established properties look strong. DEADPOOL 3 has the highest level of interest among all films currently being tracked by The Quorum. And interest is also high for CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD and THE MARVELS.

It’s the newer ones that seem to be struggling. Tracking for the upcoming BLUE BEETLE has been soft since we first added the film. And this week, MADAME WEB makes a rather muted debut on tracking. 

MADAME belongs to the DC/MCU group. The average opening weekend for that group is $120.3M, though that includes the huge established hits like SPDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME and BALCK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER. The average opening for films introducing new DC/MCU characters is about half of that. 

MADAME arrives on tracking with 20% awareness and 41% interest. These are well below the averages for the group. But again, it’s not entirely apples-to-apples. To truly see how MADAME stacks up, let’s compare it to BLACK ADAM ($67M), THE FLASH ($55M), and MORBIUS ($39M).

When measured against these films, we can see that with 20% awareness MADAME (dark yellow) is tracking closer to MORBIUS (beige). Both ADAM (brown) and FLASH (light yellow) had much higher awareness at the same distance from release. 

With 41% interest, MADAME (dark blue) has the same score as MORBIUS (41%). And, once again, it trails ADAM (black) and FLASH (light blue) by a wide margin. 

When measured against stand-alone introductory DC/MCU titles, we can see that MADAME got off to a modest debut.

Does this mean the film is destined to underperform? Absolutely not. MADAME is based on a far more obscure character than “Black Adam” or “Morbius”, so we would expect awareness to be lower.

If that’s the case, why do we even bother tracking it before the campaign begins? We do it to get a baseline. To understand where the campaign is starting from. It is not an indictment of the campaign since it hasn’t even started. It’s a data point on where the film is right now.

Hopefully these numbers will start to improve once the campaign begins.