Captain America: Brave New World isn’t going to break any world records this weekend at the box office. For the three-day opening weekend, the latest Marvel Studios movie snagged a solid, but unspectacular $88.4 million.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to make $88.4 million in a weekend. Or ever. But in the world of blockbuster movie releases, the number is neither a death knell for the Marvel Universe, nor a reason to celebrate. A lot of that is down to how it reached this number, and how Marvel — and parent company Disney — are going to report the final box office gross.
First of all, this is par for the course at this point, but that “opening weekend” includes “preview” showings of the movie that started at 2 pm ET on Thursday. Brave New World got $12 million in previews. And those box office numbers are folded into the Friday take, which was around $28 million. Meaning technically the fourth Captain America movie had a $40 million opening day, though that’s more like a two day take if you’re an actual person who understands how days work, and not a box office analyst.
It fell to about $27.5 million on Saturday, and $20.9 million on Sunday, which is not a cause for alarm, but just how viewing patterns work (big opening day, people take their time over the weekend). Possibly helping Cap 4 a bit is that the movie is only one hour and 58 minutes long, which is about half an hour shorter than the usual Marvel movie, and allows for more showings in more theaters. Also helping Disney in trumpeting Brave New World is that they likely won’t report the “opening weekend” until the end of Monday, because of the President’s Day holiday. That means the final “opening weekend” will included Thursday through Monday. Which is not an actual weekend, but whatever.
One feather in the movie’s cap (no pun intended)? The opening puts it in the Top 5 February openings of all time, just above Fifty Shades of Grey’s $85 million, but well below the $106 million opening for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, $132 million for Deadpool, and $202 million for Black Panther. Marvel can probably feel good about owning the top four February releases of all time, though maybe they want to consider throwing a little BDSM in the next one to round out the top five.
Regardless of all this wonky stuff, you’re probably wondering how this compares to other Marvel productions. The short answer is that an $88.4 million opening puts Captain America: Brave New World squarely in the middle of MCU opening weekends. Specifically, above Thor: The Dark World‘s $85.7 million take, and below Spider-Man: Far From Home‘s $92.6 million take. In terms of the Captain America movies, The First Avenger opened to $65 million, The Winter Soldier opened to $95 million, and Civil War opened to $179 million. The latter is probably not a fair comparison point since it was sold — and played — more like an Avengers movie than any of the other mini-franchises within the larger MCU.
However, the closest comparison point right now for Brave New World — unfortunately — is Quantumania. That was also released over the four-day weekend including President’s Day, and took in $106 million on the three day, as mentioned above. That had the advantage of being a multiverse movie, which, despite fan griping (hi, I am fans) definitely seems to help at the box office. But — and I’m no math genius here — 88.4 is lower than 106. Right now, Cap 4 is showing a similar pattern to Quantumania, and that movie had a huge drop-off in the second weekend.
Worse still, Captain America: Brave New World has a B- Cinemascore, which is a score given by people who are polled while leaving movie theaters after just seeing the movie. That’s the lowest in the MCU, lower than Quantumania, Eternals, and The Marvels, all of which had a B Cinemascore and dropped off precipitously in their second weekends. Generally the lower the Cinemascore, the worse word of mouth is, and though a B might be good on your math test, anything lower than B+ is pretty bad when it comes to the box office.
That said? A lot will depend not just on that second weekend, but also international grosses. We’re far from the days when a Marvel movie was a guaranteed billion dollar winner out of the gate, but if it can make it past the reported $180 million budget ($495 million including marketing), then it’s… Well, not a win, but also not a loss. Currently, including the estimate for tomorrow’s President’s Day holiday, it stands at $92.4 million internationally, for a $192.4 global total.
And just to reiterate, if anyone wants to give me $88.4 million, I will not stop them. Thanks.
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