Furthermore, Cap 4 suffered disastrous word of mouth, receiving a grisly “B-” CinemaScore grade. This presaged a ghastly 68 percent drop in its second weekend. All told, Brave New World suffered an anemic multiplier of 2.25X in the U.S., which is to say it slightly more than doubled its opening weekend with a total haul of $200 million in the U.S. The international markets in turn doubled that to a final cume of $415 million.
That’s a far cry from when Captain America: Civil War earned $1.1 billion nearly a decade ago or when even the Iron Man-less Captain America: The Winter Soldier (which introduced Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson) totaled $714 million way back in 2014.
In fact, many recent Marvel movies have suffered abysmal multipliers off their opening weekend grosses. For comparison, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s solid $106 million debut in 2023 saw the legs come out from under it in the second weekend. The film ultimately had an awful multiplier of 2.04X and only grossed $476 million globally despite its splashy start. And the similarly low-earning Eternals back in 2021 began with $71 million domestic and went on to have a 2.33X multiplier, which led to a poor $165 million total in the U.S. and $402 million globally.
However, all of those movies suffered bad word of mouth. Many folks didn’t like them. The CinemaScore for Eternals was “B,” which is bad for getting someone to recommend a movie to friends and family, and Ant-Man 3 suffered the exact same grade.
The cumulative effect might now be undercutting an MCU movie that seems to generally have pleased the fans who showed up. Anecdotally, the folks I know who are still devoted to the Marvel Cinematic Universe really dug Thunderbolts’ shaggy charms and Florence Pugh’s undeniable star charisma. That is also reflected in its CinemaScore suggesting word of mouth will be better. That could therefore prove useful for better legs going forward. After all, the last MCU movie to receive better than a “B+” CinemaScore was last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine, and whatever the critics might say about its shameless manipulation of nostalgia (including this one right here), the true believers adored it. The film received an “A” CinemaScore and wound up literally tripling its spectacular domestic opening of $211 million with a 3.02X multiplier. It earned $637 million domestically and $1.3 billion globally.
If Thunderbolts* could experience a similarly leggy run, it could cross $225 million domestically. Granted that is still down from what one week of the Merc with a Mouth did, but it could belie a rebuilding of trust with fans and audiences after so many MCU movies have left ticket-buyers feeling burned. Although globally, the days of relying on China to save a Disney release appear to be over and that might leave superhero movies with price tags in the neighborhood of a quarter-billion dollars in a precarious spot.
