(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)
Marvel wasn’t always the powerhouse that it is now. Even years after “Blade” and “X-Men” hit it big, it took a while for the industry to catch up and start regularly turning Marvel Comics characters into successful theatrical franchises. When “Iron Man” hit theaters in 2008 and kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it, everything changed. But in the early 2000s, there was kind of a wild west vibe going on. In that time, some real clunkers made their way out into the world. “Elektra” is at or very near the top (or perhaps bottom) of that list.
Released in early 2005 by 20th Century Fox, the film served as a spin-off of 2003’s “Daredevil” starring Ben Affleck, which was at best a modest financial success despite being a critical disaster. Yet, that was enough for the brass at Fox to move forward with a solo film centered on Jennifer Garner’s titular assassin. It proved to be a pretty bad decision, one that helped show every other studio attempting to get in on the superhero gold rush precisely what not to do.
In this week’s Tales from the Box Office, we’re looking back at “Elektra” in honor of its 20th anniversary. We’ll go over how the film came to be, how Jennifer Garner was essentially forced to star in it, what happened once it reached theaters, what went down in the aftermath of its release, and what lessons we can learn from it all these years later. Let’s dig in, shall we?