While critic reviews and the movie’s Cinemascore spell bad news for Captain America: Brave New World in general, we now have actual box office numbers, the most important metric of whether the film will ultimately be considered a success.
I thought I would go through and compare the film to other openings of what are generally considered Marvel “flops,” where it seems to be mostly avoiding that classification, at least here on opening weekend. These are domestic numbers:
- Captain America: Brave New World – $88 million opening weekend
- The Marvels – $46 million opening weekend
- Eternals – $71 million opening weekend
- Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – $106 million opening weekend
- Thor: The Dark World – $85 million opening weekend
- Iron Man 2 – $128 million opening weekend
So, it’s right in that range, and nearly twice as good as the lowest-performing MCU movie ever, The Marvels, which went on to only earn $206 million worldwide. But how does it compare to say, other Captain America movies?
- Captain America: The First Avenger – $65 million opening weekend, earned $370 million total
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier – $95 million opening, earned $714 million total
- Captain America: Civil War – $179 million opening weekend, earned $1.1 billion total
So, it’s number three out of four there for openings. If its trajectory continues compared to these other Captain America movies, it could end up earning perhaps $600+ million, though that assumes word-of-mouth is good enough to carry it further from here, which may not be the case judging by its Cinemascore. That level of performance, however, would proably be considered at least some level of a success compared to recent Marvel underperformers (then we have Deadpool and Wolverine’s $1.3 billion, of course).
But, some context in that Captain America: The First Avenger was one of the earliest MCU movies before the universe truly exploded. Though it did earn a lot less than the more-beloved Iron Man at $585 million worldwide. You could also view this as a half-sequel to 2008’s Incredible Hulk, which only earned $264 million (this was even before the MCU truly began).
I don’t know what Disney is aiming for here. At least these initial numbers indicate it could end up escaping the badge of being a box office flop, but I’m also looking at something like Ant-Man: Quantumania, which had a higher opening, but only earned $476 million (albeit with a higher budget) with very similar critic and audience scores (which were actually pretty high). If it’s that level, near the film’s break even point, that may be more of a problem for the film, and for the concept of a new Captain America going forward.
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