Marvel’s Inhumans was heralded as a groundbreaking series. The first television miniseries to premiere in IMAX theaters, it was meant to simultaneously continue and innovate the Marvel TV universe.
It didn’t.
Premiering in almost 700 IMAX theaters around the world, the first two episodes of Inhumans grossed just $2.6 million from their theatrical run, THR reports, quoting box office analyst Jeff Bock: “This is a pretty ho-hum result. I just don’t think the average moviegoer knew what this was and if they did, [they] certainly didn’t know it was debuting in theaters before its TV debut.”
And the thrashing doesn’t stop at the box office. The few critics who saw them loathed the first two episodes of Inhumans. Even very pro-superhero outlets found nothing to love: Siddhant Adlakha of Birth.Movies.Death, despite being easy to please when it comes to superhero fare (according to himself), said that “nothing works in terms of character or story.”
This shouldn’t really be surprising. Everything about this project seemed ill-advised, starting from the decision to have Scott Buck (of Iron Fist notoriety) be the showrunner. On top of that, the show clearly has fairly bland, uninspired visuals—so why would Marvel choose this to be the show that premieres on IMAX? And then, after all that, Marvel clearly didn’t spend that much on advertising for Inhumans, so nobody knew to go to the theater for it. All in all, this is exactly what everyone should have expected to happen.
Marvel’s Inhumans premieres on ABC on Sept. 27.