Superhero saturation: Why have Ant-Man and Shazam struggled at the box office?

I would imagine the main problem for Shazam is that, does the character have a future in James Gunn's plans for DC?

The answer is "No". He inherited it, it was too far along to stop, had he come in earlier in pre-production, he might well have halted production.

Much as the first movie was alright, it didn't exactly set the Box Office alight, so its chances of doing significantly better were not a given.

I think Ant-Man's problems largely stem from Marvels disastrous Phase 4, that doesn't seem to have a specific direction.

The previous 3 Phases were quite clear, introduce new characters, get them together for an ensemble movie, and slowly introduce the big bad of Thanos in the background, until the culmination.

In the first 3 Phases, fans pretty much considered each movie essential watching, hence why Black Panther and Captain Marvel over performed for what they delivered.

The first 3 Phases were to get everyone interested, but some of the TV series seem to go out of their way to suggest "We want this part of the audience to be interested but not this part", which if you want to do a Ms Marvel series aimed at getting girls more interested, thats fine, but don't at the same time make proclamations that The Marvels is going to be bigger and more important than previous Avengers movies, when you've set it up to ignore certain elements of your audience.

Ant-Man is the culmination of apathy toward the MCU since the Infinity Saga ended, many feeling the MCU had run its course and was over, and frankly, its like Marvel are trying to prove them right!

Me and my boy went to see Wakanda Forever, but were underwhelmed by it, so much so that we both couldn't be bothered to muster the interest for Ant-Man 3, because none of these movies seem essential to the overall story arc anymore.

I'm hopeful that Guardians of the Galaxy 3 might be an improvement, and hoping that Secret Invasion might be able to repair some of the damage, but beyond that......

Have we been saturated with GOOD superhero movies lately or BAD ones? Has anybody ever said "I'm getting tired of all these GOOD superhero movies"?

Like their other recent, weaker offerings, Ant-man will still do fine b/c of the front loading these get based on past Marvel glory. DC doesn't have that luxury, but a few more Marvel misses, they won't have that luxury either. Slowing down would be wise, as these releases don't feel like big events any longer.

Maybe people are fed up of the same old KIDDIE characters being spoon-fed to us in movies?

Try The Boys on Amazon Prime: Superheroes, but with adult themes throughout and all-new interesting characters with questionable morals at best. I was sick to death of MCU crap at that point, but I love these characters instead!

Time to make a hard R the shadow reboot

The 1st Shazam felt kind of like a fluke to me. It was a movie about a relatively unknown hero that managed to be somewhat refreshing among the usual superhero movies. That said, I don't think that many people were left hankering for more of the same.

Putin

Simple: After Thanos, general audiences aren't willing to put in time for another 20 movie series. It was done well, and the generalaudiencewas satisfied. DC didn't have a positive series direction so audiences didn't invest time in their products.
It's like the Hobbit and the rings of power. After TLOTR did such a good job, they weren't interested in another trilogy because it was already done well. Then the TV show was released and people tuned out due to the poor story and direction it was going.