Sunday update: It’s reported Thor: Love and Thunder brought in $42.1M on Saturday which according to Disney is giving the flick a $143M opening weekend (12th best opening for an MCU movie) with a worldwide gross of $302 million, so while not a complete disaster as it’s not the low end of $130 million, it’s also not as high as the upper estimates of $165 million. It will be interesting to see how big of a second-weekend drop the film has next week. The Rotten Tomatoes Audience score has also dropped to 81%; the Critics score is at 68% with 311 reviews.
Saturday am update: It’s reported the Friday opening is $69.5 million, which is lower than the initial $70M estimates, with a possible $135-145 million opening. Also, Thor: Love and Thunder gets a low CinemaScore at a B+; only Eternals is worse with a B; Doctor Strange 2 also has a B+. The Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes has also dropped to 82%.
Friday: No surprise here and just like I said, the Thor: Love and Thunder box office looks to be underperforming, and get this, reception to the movie is actually being compared to Eternals.
Deadline tries to shill a bit noting “there’s nothing to be cynical about,” but the numbers don’t lie, as early estimates had the Thor: Love and Thunder box office opening to as high as $160 million, but now the estimates have been downgraded to as low as $130 million for the weekend.
It’s just as I said, Thor: Love and Thunder is following in the footsteps of Doctor Strange 2 in that both movies are huge disappointments which is the same for basically all of Kevin Feige’s Phase 4 garbage sans Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Regarding the Thor: Love and Thunder box office numbers, again similar to Doctor Strange 2, the box office appears to be heavily frontloaded with Feige’s zombie fans as the Thursday previews come in at $29 million, which is around 21% less than DS2 from May.
The Friday box office, which includes Thursday previews, looks to be around $70 million which is well shy of DS2’s $90 million; however, it is a lot better than Thor: Ragnarok‘s $46 million on its first Friday.
If that 21% decline holds, the Thor: Love and Thunder box office should actually finish with $147 million.
We’ll have to wait and see how Thor: Love and Thunder performs on Saturday to determine whether the box office will land on the higher end of current estimates of $140 million or at the aforementioned low end.
Thor: Love and Thunder compared to Eternals
Regarding comparing the reception of Thor: Love and Thunder to Eternals, Deadline writes how the Thursday preview audience (again, bear in mind they are mostly made up of Feige’s zombie audience who like anything), the fans give the flick 3 1/2 stars and a 63% definite recommend, while for Eternals, the same type of fans gave it 3 1/2 stars, with a 57% recommend. Eternals happens to be the worst-performing Marvel movie at the box office and has the worst Rotten Tomatoes score for an MCU movie, so I guess therein lies the comparison.
The Thor: Love and Thunder Rotten Tomatoes score has also been dropping as it now stands at 68% – the third-worst score for an MCU movie and close to Thor: The Dark World‘s 66% – with the Audience Score at 83%; Thor: Ragnarok, also directed by Taika Waititi, has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes with an 83% from fans.
