(Welcome to Stories from the box officeour column examining box office miracles, disasters and everything in between, and what we can learn from them.)

Marvel wasn't always the powerhouse it is now. Even years after Blade and X-Men hit it off, it took time 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 launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know iteverything has changed. But in the early 2000s, there was a kind of wild west vibe going on. During that time, some real clunkers made their way out into the world. "Elektra" is at or very near the top (or maybe the 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 a modest financial success at best despite being a critical disaster. Still, that was enough for the brass at Fox to move forward with a solo film centering on Jennifer Garner's titular assassin. It turned out to be a pretty bad decision, which helped show every other studio trying to get in on the superhero gold rush exactly what no to be done.

In this week's Box Office Stories, we look back at Elektra in honor of its 20th anniversary. We'll look at how the film came to be, how Jennifer Garner was essentially forced to star in it, what happened after it hit theaters, what went down after its release, and what lessons we can learn from it all years later. Let's dig in, shall we?

Elektra as we know it focuses on Elektra Natchios (Garner) collects after her death at the hands of Bullseye (Colin Farrell) in Daredevil. The deadly assassin is brought back to life by the Order of the Hand, the elite group of ninja assassins who trained her. She is then ordered to kill a man and his teenage daughter who is not sitting with her, leading her to go into battle with the Hand.

Marvel and Hollywood have been trying to make an Elektra movie since the '80s, thanks to Frank Miller's success with the character in the comics. According to a 1992 article in DiversityOliver Stone ("Platoon") once wanted to make an Elektra Assassin feature film that never materialized. That being said, the idea dates back to 2003's Daredevil.

However, the idea of ​​doing a spin-off related to a film that was a critical failure rather than a huge financial success was an odd choice. It doesn't help that the stars haven't been kind to it over the years. Speaking in 2013, Affleck called "Daredevil" the only movie he regrets making:

"The only movie I actually regret is Daredevil." It just kills me, I love that story, that character, and the fact that it's beautiful stays with me."

As for Garner, she didn't seem too warm to the idea either. “I heard that ('Elektra') is terrible. (Jennifer) called me and said it was horrible," said her ex-boyfriend Michael Vartan. SFGate in January 2005. "She had to do it because of 'Daredevil.' "It was in her contract."

Indeed, stars often sign multi-picture deals when they sign a deal for a potential franchise. So whether Garner thought Elektra was a good idea or not is kind of irrelevant. In order not to violate the said contract, she was obliged to shoot the film. It's not exactly a good way to start a major production like this, but Fox felt it was the way to go. So it went.

Why does Fox want to make Garner do this? At the time, she was in the middle of her run on the highly popular Alias ​​series. Created by JJ Abrams long before his feature directorial debut Mission: Impossible III. the show was a big hit and Garner was probably at the peak of her powers. But she was still under contract for that series as well, which complicated things.

Rob Bowman ("Reign of Fire") has been tapped to direct "Elektra," with a cast that includes Terence Stamp (Stick), Kirsten Prout (Abby Miller) and Will Yun Lee (Kiriji). To put it mildly, Fox did not make it easy for the director. In an October 2005 interview with IGNBowman explained that he and his crew were on a very tight schedule centered around Garner's limited availability:

"The process of making this film was very, very compressed. Jennifer showed up a few days after the first day of shooting, and I went back to work with her just a few days after Alias ​​wrapped. The preparation was very, very compressed. But that was the nature of the beast.

Bowman worked on a tight schedule and a relatively tight budget, said to be in the $43 million range (although some estimates put it closer to $60 million). Even accounting for inflation, that's on the low side for a comic book movie. That would put it a similar range to 2019's Joker, though it wasn't nearly as profitable. As Bowman explained in the same interview, the whole endeavor was pretty tumultuous:

“I finished it. I would go back to the studio and watch a reel. I would give them notes. I would get in my car and drive to Burbank for the paint and give them notes. I would go to the printing lab and give them notes to make."

Fox decided to essentially drop "Elektra" in early January, which is notoriously not the best month for big releases. That narrative has changed a bit in recent years, but generally speaking, crowd-pleasing hits like Liam Neeson's Taken were the exception rather than the rule for January releases then. That did not bode well.

To make matters worse, the critics were very, very unkind to the film. It still ranks as one of the worst reviewed Marvel movies ever, right up there with the likes of Josh Trank's 2015 Fantastic Four. To date, Electra has an 11% approval rating. on Rotten Tomatoes. So when the film opened in theaters on January 14, 2005, almost everything was working against it.

In its opening weekend, the Marvel spin-off barely cracked the top five for the weekend with a $12.8 million opening. "Coach Carter" took the top spot, while even Warner Bros. the oft-forgotten "Racing Stripes" placed higher at number four. Plus, "Meet the Fockers" was still in the middle of its run at $522 million. It got worse pretty quickly, as Bowman's film fell off a cliff in its second weekend before dropping out of the top 10 entirely by its third weekend.

In the end, "Elektra" ended its theatrical run with $24.4 million domestically to go with an improved but still awful $32.5 million overseas for a worldwide total of $56.9 million. In other words, it was roughly 32% of the $179 million earned by "Daredevil" roughly two years earlier. The whole thing was a train wreck.

Even with a blockbuster like Elektra, Fox was willing to put some relatively significant resources into the DVD release. While the physical media market is far from dead, it is a shadow of what it was in the early 2000s. To that end, Bowman was allowed to make a pretty significant director's cut for the DVD, which he talked about in the same interview with IGN:

“The studio allowed me to re-edit the work without any discussion from them. I just sat in a room with my editor and cut it the way I wanted. As rich as I could, I also wanted to make it tailor-made for home entertainment because it's such a different presentation."

The DVD also included an ax-wielding cameo from Affleck's Daredevil, who did not make any part of the film. For what it's worth, the director's cut of "Elektra" is considered an improvement, but it only gets one so far. It would be a full decade later before we got a truly proper rendition of the character when Elodie Jung has been cast as Elektra for Season 2 of Netflix's Daredevil. Mind you, this was firmly in the MCU era; not that bad comic book adaptations weren't still happening, but they were less and less.

As for Garner, her version of the character ended up getting a redemption tour as well. Garner is back as Elektra inside 2024's Deadpool & Wolverine Becomes Highest-Grossing R-Rated Movie of All Time with more than $1.3 billion at the worldwide box office. While that role couldn't go back in time and improve Garner's solo film, it certainly helped provide some closure.

Even before cinematic universes were all the rage in Hollywood, Fox saw the potential in having different superheroes appear in each other's movies and then use those movies to make other movies. The problem? It really doesn't work when the movie you're using to build this enterprise wasn't very good - or that successful - in the first place. "Daredevil" was just one kind of hit. You would have been better off leaving well enough alone.

The making of "Elektra" smelled like a fool from the start. From forcing the lead actor to shoot the film to the rushed production, none of this came from a creative place. That is not a recipe for success. Part of the reason that Sam Raimi's Spider-Man was such a hit in 2002 is that it captures the essence of the titular character and is crafted with care. It wasn't made just because "audiences like superhero movies." There is more to it than that. There's still more to it than that two decades later.

Maybe something like 2004 is more forgivable Blade: Trinity turned out to be such a mess. The previous two Blade movies were very successful, so it's only natural that New Line Cinema would make another one. However, it's much less understandable when a studio is trying to squeeze blood out of a stone, the stone in this situation being Daredevil. As superhero movies face an uncertain future in 2025, Hollywood would do well not to repeat the sins of the past in their quest to break the box office.

All due respect, but "Elektra" was a sin brought out with lousy intentions. Bad things happen when studios get into such ventures. Just look at Sony's solo-negative Spider-Man movies, especially Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter. 20 years later, these things are still happening. This particular ill-fated Marvel spin-off should be a cautionary tale.