A 13-Year MCU Streak Has Officially Ended & It's Disney's Fault

A 13-Year MCU Streak Has Officially Ended & It's Disney's Fault Chris Evans as Steve Rogers / Captain America looking up in The Avengers By  Cooper Hood Published 16 minutes ago Cooper Hood is the Associate Editor for all new movie releases, in theaters and on streaming. In addition to writing articles about these titles and upcoming releases, he also oversees content planning for each, ensuring that ScreenRant continues to cover major releases for months after their release. He has written various reviews for ScreenRant that appear on Rotten Tomatoes, coordinated Oscars and San Diego Comic-Con coverage, appeared on CNN to talk about Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, and done select interviews with talent over the years. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap

2025 is a year for the history books for the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a major streak has finally come to an end. Building off the $1 billion success of Deadpool & Wolverine and leading into the sure-fire billion-dollar-plus hits of Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, Marvel Studios delivered three big releases this year.

Captain America: Brave New World kicked off the year, followed by Thunderbolts* at the start of the summer and The Fantastic Four: First Steps in the middle of the year. Yet, these 2025 superhero movies did not perform particularly great at the box office, finishing with $415 million, $382 million, and $521 million grosses, respectively.

The result was these MCU movies being passed up by many others released this year, including DC Studios' Superman. It was a sign of the MCU's box office dominance ending, as the franchise has had at least one of the year's top 10 highest grossers dating back to 2012. But with more titles having come out and performed better, that streak is now over, and Disney is responsible for it.

Zootopia 2 Knocked The MCU Completely Out Of 2025's Top 10 Box Office

Vanessa Kirby's Sue Storm shouting and using her powers in The Fantastic Four: First Steps

The Fantastic Four: First Steps was the last MCU movie holding onto a top 10 spot at the global box office for 2025, but it was only a matter of time before it would fall out too. That inevitability has now come to pass thanks to Disney's hit animated sequel Zootopia 2.

The Walt Disney Animation Studios production came out last week as part of an early release for Thanksgiving. And despite taking nine years to get the sequel, audiences flocked to theaters around the world to see it. The result was Zootopia 2's record global opening, which officially came in at $560.3 million.

That astonishing figure was enough for it to already surpass The Fantastic Four: First Steps' entire box office, doing so in just five days. And as a result, the movie starring Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby has tumbled one spot, leaving it at #11 at the worldwide box office.

The MCU's slide is sure to continue as the rest of the year plays out. Wicked: For Good is only $130 million from knocking First Steps down to #12, and the sequel should easily make that amount in the weeks to come.

There's also Avatar: Fire and Ash looming, which would then push the MCU's highest-grossing film for the year down to #13. If everything goes right for Five Nights at Freddy's 2, perhaps the video game sequel could even outperform all three 2025 MCU movies.

Regardless of where Fantastic Four finishes, 2025 is now only the second year when the MCU failed to have a single movie in the top 10 global box office (excluding 2009 and 2020, as Marvel Studios didn't release any movies).

Luckily, the studio should not be at risk of having its lowest finish for its highest-grossing movie, a record Thor holds for its 15th-place finish in 2011.

Marvel Studios is in a good place to rebound and start a new streak with Avengers: Doomsday and Spider-Man: Brand New Day coming next year, but that doesn't take away from the fact that 2025 became another piece of evidence that audiences aren't responding to MCU movies the same way they used to. If they were, one of these films would've performed well enough to continue the top 10 streak.

Marvel Cinematic Universe Created by Kevin Feige First Film Iron Man Upcoming Films Blade, Avengers: Doomsday (2026), Avengers: Secret Wars First TV Show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Upcoming TV Shows Marvel Zombies, Wonder Man, Vision Quest Cast Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Edward Norton, Paul Rudd, Tom Holland, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Brie Larson, Chadwick Boseman, Sebastian Stan, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Pom Klementieff, Josh Brolin, Karen Gillan, Clark Gregg, Paul Bettany, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Simu Liu, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Angelina Jolie, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Richard Madden, Barry Keoghan, Gemma Chan, Ma Dong-seok, Brian Tyree Henry, Kumail Nanjiani, Lauren Ridloff, Lia McHugh, Jonathan Majors

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