Stephen King Has a Message for Those Celebrating 'The Marvels' Box Office Flop

Stephen King's writing has formed the basis of some of the most iconic movies in film history like Carrie, The Shining, and It. Movies based on his books are quite far content-wise from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and King himself isn't exactly a fan of the big-budget superhero movies. Still, the Misery author isn't participating in the schadenfreude about the latest Marvel flop at the box office.

King shared his honest thoughts in a social media post. "I don’t go to MCU movies, don’t care for them, but I find this barely masked gloating over the low box office for The Marvels very unpleasant," King wrote. "Why gloat over failure?"

The Marvels pulled in $47 million at the domestic box office in its opening weekend despite costing more than $200 million to make. Its performance cements its spot as the lowest debut for a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie in history.

The film centers around three female superheroes—Brie Larson's Captain Marvel, Iman Vellani's Ms. Marvel, and Teyonah Parris' Monica Rambeau—and is directed by a woman, Nia DaCosta. King believes this might be part of the reason some traditional MCU fans might have passed on the movie.

"Some of the rejection of The Marvels may be adolescent fanboy hate. You know, ‘Yuck! GIRLS!'" he surmised in another post.

It's not the first time Larson has had to deal with toxicity around her role as Captain Marvel. When her standalone movie premiered in 2019, it was review-bombed by fans on websites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb despite never having seen it. Her Captain Marvel co-star Samuel L. Jackson commended her earlier this year for standing ten toes down in the face of misogynistic critics.

“She’s not going to let any of that stuff destroy her," Jackson told Rolling Stone. “These incel dudes who hate strong women, or the fact that she’s a feminist who has an opinion and expressed it? Everybody wants people to be who they want them to be. She is who she is, and she’s genuinely that."

It is worth noting, however, that the film's opening weekend audience skewed male. 61 percent of film-goers were male, compared to 39 percent female. This is a typical breakdown for MCU films, although odd for one that's female-centric.

The Marvels is in theaters now.