he age of the comic book superhero movie is over. I don’t say this with glee. I am a huge fan of superhero movies and will probably still go to see the latest MCU film till the day I die. And there probably always will be superhero movies made—but they will never be what they were in their heyday. Between 2016 and 2019, studios were releasing around six superhero movies a year, with multiple entries—such as Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame in 2019—making over $1 billion. Yet this year, four superhero films were released—Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, Superman, and Fantastic Four: First Steps—not one of which grossed more than $700 million. This is the first time this has happened since 2011.
So if superhero movies are dying, what’s going to replace them? Surprisingly, it will almost certainly be two genres that few people would expect: faith-based and horror. This might surprise people because these would seem to attract very different audiences. But the changing realities of both the economics of the film business and American demographics is such that the dominance of both these genres—and potentially a hybrid of the two—is all but inevitable.
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