Superhero movie ticket sales
Since this board seems so obsessed with box office - the chart below ranks the superhero movies by millions of tickets sold, grouped in columns by current franchise. Meaning, I group Spider-Man movies with the MCU since he is currently in the MCU, for example. This shows some of the relative and potential popularity of the characters. I make note of a couple of interesting observations below the chart.
MCU current character films DC character films Fox/Marvel films
Avengers 76.9 Dark Knight 74.5
Spider-Man 69.5 Batman 63.0
Spider-Man 2 60.2 Dark Knight Rises 57.6
Avengers: Age of Ultron 53.6 Superman 57.4
Spider-Man 3 48.9
Iron Man 3 48.8
Cap.Am.3: Civil War 46.7
Iron Man 44.3
Guardians of the Galaxy 41.2 Batman Forever 42.3 Deadpool 42.3
Iron Man 2 39.3 Batman Returns 39.2
Superman II 38.9
BvS: Dawn of Justice 38.3
Suicide Squad 36.5 X-Men3: Last Stand 35.8
Amazing Spider-Man 33.7 Man of Steel 34.7 X2: X-Men United 35.6
CA2: Winter Soldier 31.2 Batman Begins 32.2 X-Men 29.2
Superman Returns 30.5 X-Men: Days of FP 28.1
Thor: The Dark World 24.7 Fant. Four (2005) 24.1
Amazing Spider-Man 2 24.4 X-Men Orig.: Wolv. 24.1
Thor 22.5 Batman and Robin 23.4
Cap.Am.1: First Avenger 22.3
Hulk 21.9
Ant-Man 21.8
Incredible Hulk 18.8 Superman III 19.0 FF2: RotSS 19.2
X-Men: First Class 18.2
X-Men: Apocalypse 17.8
Daredevil 17.0
Ghost Rider 16.8 Wolverine, The 16.9
Watchmen 15.0
Green Lantern 14.5
Catwoman 6.5 Fant. Four (2015) 6.8
Superman IV 4.0 Elektra 3.8
EXCLUDING FLOPS below the arbitrary ticket sales # of 15M:
MCU character films that INCLUDE Spider-Man and/or Iron Man - 11
MCU character films that DON'T include SM and/or Iron Man - 10
Fox films that INCLUDE Wolverine - 8
Fox films that DON'T include Wolverine - 3
DC films that INCLUDE Batman and/or Superman - 14
DC films that DON'T include Batman and/or Superman - ZERO
So, DC has yet to release a single movie without Batman or Superman that has sold decent tickets.
Maybe Wonder Woman will be the first next year - as well as the first decent female superhero film.
Every Spider-Man film has sold less tickets than its predecessor.
Incredible Hulk sold fewer tickets than its inferior predecessor, Hulk.
The Wolverine sold fewer tickets than its inferior "Origins" predecessor.
Batman Begins sold fewer tickets than Batman Forever - and Suicide Squad! The public was still leery about Batman full 8 years after Batman and Robin. Bad movies create bad will.
My life has major plot holes.