While Marvel certainly has some big things on deck for the rest of 2025, from Daredevil: Born Again this week to Fantastic Four this summer, Captain America: Brave New World continues to be a somewhat underwhelming endeavor.
Past lackluster critic reviews, albeit solid audience scores, we are now tracking its box office, and while it has retained a #1 domestic spot amidst a series of weekends without many high profile releases, its earnings are slowing as it inches toward what is supposed to be its break-even number.
As of this past weekend, Captain America: Brave New World has earned $341 million globally here in its third week of release, including a $15 million domestic weekend that just ended. Domestically, its overall $163 million haul is the lowest in the MCU besides The Incredible Hulk and The Marvels, though it will have time to go higher with more weeks to go.
The problem, however is that Brave New World needs a lot more than its reported $180 million budget to break even, as those budget numbers are only part of the story when it comes to a release like this with distribution and marketing. Estimate put it at a $400+ million break-even point, which is still $60 million short of where we are now.
It does seem likely to pass this eventually, but in an age where Disney wants big hits, this is not going to be that, despite starring a character that is supposed to be a key part of the universe going forward as he attempts to re-assemble The Avengers.
Despite tracking similarly, this is not on the level of a true disaster like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which may have ended with $476 million at the box office, but with a much, much higher budget and breakeven point, which it did not come close to hitting.
This past week, the biggest MCU story was that a bunch of official, but unreleased concept art leaked for Avengers: Doomsday. Notably, it did not feature Sam Wilson’s Captain America in any of the shots, but not too much should be read into that, most likely. Other key figures in the MCU were also missing like Scarlet Witch, Thor, Spider-Man and Captain Marvel, so either they’re just not shown, or the Avengers as a whole may have a lesser role in Doomsday.
It’s hard to spin Captain America: Brave New World as a success. Poor critic scores and a very small profit margin, if any. Audiences may have liked it more than the pros, but they did not turn out in droves to see it. We’ll see what the fate of Captain America is from here.
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