The latest Spider-Man film, Brand New Day, has surpassed $2.4 billion at the global box office, placing it as the third-highest grossing film of all time, following Avatar and Avengers: Endgame. Meanwhile, Avengers: Doomsday, set for a December release, has already generated over $50 million in U.S. ticket presales. These figures indicate that audiences remain interested in superhero films, even as Marvel has encountered some difficulties in recent years. In 2025, Marvel faced a challenging year with three major releases that underperformed. Captain America: Brave New World earned $415 million worldwide, Thunderbolts brought in $382 million, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps only reached $521 million, despite a reported budget of $200 million. These results have led some to question the sustainability of high-budget superhero films. Sebastian Stan, who plays Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has suggested that Marvel could explore more affordable, genre-specific films for characters that might not require the massive budgets of multiversal adventures. In an interview with New York Magazine, Stan proposed a "Sicario-esque" approach for Bucky Barnes' next film—a thriller centered on a man obsessed with uncovering the past. Stan, who recently earned an Oscar nomination for The Apprentice and a Golden Globe for A Different Man, believes this direction could help combat superhero fatigue among audiences. The idea of placing Marvel characters in more grounded, lower-budget films is not new. Films like Logan, which portrayed Wolverine as an aging gunslinger in a western-style story, and Joker, which focused on a troubled character in a gritty urban setting, both achieved nearly $1.7 billion globally. Marvel itself has experimented with non-traditional genres before, such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which was framed as a 1970s-style conspiracy thriller, and Ant-Man, which was structured as a heist movie. These examples show that Marvel has a history of adapting its characters to different genres, potentially offering a path forward for future projects.