Deadline’s big D23 takeaway includes a section declaring that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is no longer suffering from superhero fatigue.
Nice of the trades to catch up.
As we’ve said all along, superhero fatigue never existed. And we were right.
The evidence behind Deadline’s epiphany: three MCU dates on the 2028 calendar, X-Men on May 5, Ghost Rider most likely July 28, and Black Panther 3 on December 15, plus Spider-Man: Brand New Day crossing $2 billion as Sony’s biggest movie ever.
A Disney executive quoted in the piece says the success isn’t about IP. It’s about making great movies, and Brand New Day works because it is an excellent, fun film, not simply because Spider-Man is in it.
All true.
It is also the exact argument Cosmic Book News has made through every superhero fatigue news cycle for years.
The genre never got tired.
The audience got tired of bad movies. There is a difference.
There Was No Fatigue. Audiences Were Grading The Movies.
Three weeks ago we laid out the proof: superhero fatigue only seemed to appear when the movies were bad. Quantumania, The Marvels, Love and Thunder, and Eternals underperformed, and the “think” pieces bloomed.
Then No Way Home did $1.9 billion in a pandemic, Deadpool & Wolverine did $1.3 billion, and Brand New Day took the all-time opening record at $360 million with 24.1 million tickets sold in a single weekend.
The same summer, Supergirl collapsed 76 percent in its second weekend on the way to a quarter-billion-dollar loss.
Same genre. Same supposedly “fatigued” audience. Same month.
The difference was the movie.
And it wasn’t only outright bad movies (and TV shows) getting rejected.
Marvel’s safe, middle-of-the-road 2025 lineup — Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, and First Steps — got shrugged at too, with no trailer records, no presale records, and no lines.
Bad movies get rejected. Safe movies get shrugged at. Event movies get lines around the block.
As we wrote when Hollywood’s rinse-and-repeat Guardians formula finally got the bill, the formula didn’t suddenly stop working.
The audience’s patience ran out.
Superhero Fatigue Was Always The Excuse
“Superhero fatigue” became the catch-all explanation for every underperformer, regardless of why it actually underperformed.
Marvel’s post-Endgame run. James Gunn’s DC, where Feige’s “changing tastes” line was the polite version. Sony’s Kraven and Madame Web.
Everything got filed under the same excuse.
Even when Disney’s own CEO was congratulating Sony on a record-shattering week, the trade coverage was still talking about a genre in decline.
The fatigue narrative also gave everyone somewhere else to point.
Feige blamed the workload instead of the work. The trades blamed the customer instead of the product.
Different jerseys, same dodge: anything but admitting the movies weren’t good enough.
Tom Rothman said it plainest after the record fell. The audience is the boss, and the boss passed on the bad ones.
Whether every verdict was fair is beside the point. The audience made the call.
What Actually Changed
Nothing about the audience changed.
A great Spider-Man movie hit theaters, and Marvel is filling 2028 with directors and casts that look like event movies instead of obligations.
That’s what Deadline’s “epiphany” is really reacting to.
Look at how quickly the narrative shifted.
In July, while projecting the opening, Deadline was already floating the idea that Brand New Day could end the superhero fatigue talk.
By D23, the fatigue is officially over.
Between those two points, the audience didn’t suddenly rediscover superheroes.
It bought tickets to a good movie, exactly the way it always has.
If Doomsday Misses, The Fatigue Talk Comes Right Back
Now watch what happens in December.
Deadline itself notes some fan cynicism over Avengers: Doomsday‘s trailer.
If Doomsday delivers on December 18, superhero fatigue stays “over.”
If it doesn’t, the fatigue headlines will be back before the weekend is over.
And they’ll be just as wrong as they were for the last three years.
Because whether Doomsday soars or stumbles, the movie will be the reason.
The audience is grading the movies.
It always was.
Everything on Doomsday is at our hub, and every Brand New Day number is at the Brand New Day hub.
