No Babes, No Box Office: Thunderbolts and Ballerina Bomb with Women

Exactly as I said, it’s learned that the female audience didn’t show up for both Thunderbolts and Ballerina, which have both bombed at the box office.

It’s also become known the large Hispanic audience that normally gushes over fanboy type of movies didn’t show up, which isn’t a surprise.

Thunderbolts is looking like it will finish under $400 million, the second-worst MCU box office of all time. The worst? The Marvels. Ballerina, the John Wick spinoff, also underperformed, opening to only $25 million.

“Intended and targeted audience” isn’t showing up

As I’ve said before in the past many times and most recently when I explained why Ballerina bombed, you need to know your audience, as the “intended and targeted audience” isn’t showing up, and you know what? They never have.

It was a similar story for both The Marvels and Madame Web, two giant failures: the ladies aren’t bothering with this garbage. It’s known that only a small number of hardcore fanboys are showing up. It’s the same story for the MCU shows on Disney+. It’s the same for the Disney Star Wars Trilogy and various shows. Throw in Doctor Who, Terminator, and the list goes on and on and on.

You have to wonder why Hollywood keeps putting out this sort of content. There’s failure after failure after failure, yet they keep churning it out. Is it incompetence? Do they like losing money? Or are they getting incentivized and subsidized via DEI funding to put out this crap? I mean, they can’t be this stupid, right? There has to be a reason.

No more killer babes

Back to Thunderbolts and Ballerina, official data reveals their audience was made up mostly of males. Females avoided the flicks. Thunderbolts skewed 65% male, and Ballerina 63% male.

Of that, 26% were Hispanic for Thunderbolts, and 27% for Ballerina, which is considered low. To boot, Ballerina features Hispanic actress Ana de Armas in the starring role, so they didn’t even come out to support their own people.

Feminist YouTuber Grace Randolph actually pointed out the numbers, and she questioned, “What has happened to the appeal of killer babes? Angelina Jolie built an entire career off of it.” Randolph also points to how Scarlett Johansson has performed better with Lucy. 

My answer: isn’t it obvious? Where are these killer babes? Again, as I said in my previous article, there’s no T&A. There are no killer babes.

Sexy women no longer allowed

Scarlett Johansson was super sexy as Black Widow in Iron Man 2 and The Avengers. She even pranced in front of Jon Favreau and the production team, showing off her costume as Favreau checked her out up and down. Nowadays, this would probably land you on the front page of Variety, with claims of sexual harassment. Why then did Black Widow fail? Per Johansson’s own words, it’s a #MeToo movie.

Can’t have this in the MCU anymore pic.twitter.com/BJxMostD9s

— Cosmic Book News (@cosmicbooknews) June 9, 2025

Florence Pugh and Yelena? She’s depressed. There’s no T&A, and her character comes off boring, dull, and grey. Where’s the sex appeal? Where are the boyfriends?

MCU got it right, what happened?

They got it right with Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow when the MCU first started.

A female assassin will use her feminine traits to get close to the target. Females don’t have the strength of males. That’s just a fact. A female assassin isn’t going to be used to go in guns a blazin’ and kick the ass out of 250lbs dudes. She’s going to use her sex appeal and her brains, get close to the target, and then take him out. Sure, she’ll kick some ass, but she’s gotta look good doing it. And Scarlett Johansson does that (she also looks good in Jurassic World Rebirth). Does Yelena?

Ballerina: Casualty of fan backlash?

I haven’t seen Ballerina, yet, so I don’t know what Ana de Armas does in the movie. I know Chad Stahelski reshot a lot, if not all of the action shots. He comes from a martial arts background. I’ve seen footage of Ana de Armas fighting Keanu Reeves. There’s no way you are going to make me believe she can go toe to toe with John Wick. Even if by some miracle she’s equivalent in skill to Wick, when two fighters have the same skill, whoever is stronger wins. That’s a fact.

If Ballerina does happen to be a good movie, then the reason it failed is because it’s a casualty of all the BS forced on the fandom for the past ten years (longer in the comics).

They Sell Sex to Promote It—But Not in the Actual Movie

Or how about this? Have you guys noticed that all the girls in these various movies and TV shows look SUPER SEXY on the Red Carpet, in interviews, and on their social media (Pugh even showed off her ass to promote Thunderbolts on Jimmy Kimmel)? Yet, their characters in the movies have zero sex appeal? Maybe there’s a big clue where to start.

Here ya go:

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