As expected, following Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts is the next box office bomb from Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios.
Thunderbolts actually scores the second-worst MCU opening of all time when you factor in inflation, only outperforming The Marvels. It fails to even beat Eternals.
The flick cost a massive $180 million plus likely another $100 million in marketing. It will be lucky to hit $400 million unless it has legs. Its second weekend will be a big test.
Update: Marvel has officially rebranded Thunderbolts to New Avengers.
Update #2: The second weekend has also underperformed.
Box office is low
The trades report that Thunderbolts opened to $76 million, which is right in line with the estimates. The foreign gross is also soft at $86.1 million, which gives Thunderbolts a current $162.1 million worldwide gross.
Monday update: The actuals are lower, as Sunday underperformed by $2M:
Grosses
- Domestic (46.3%): $74,300,608
- International (53.7%): $86,100,000
- Worldwide: $160,400,608
Update: Following the rebrand and retitle, New Avengers bombs on Monday at the box office. It also scores the fifth-lowest MCU Tuesday of all time.
It guessed the break even number for Thunderbolts is around $500M-$600M, so it’s looking like another Marvel movie will lose at least $100M for Disney. Note: The studio gets about half the money from ticket sales domestically and even less from foreign markets.
Where are the Marvel fans?
Reactions have been good, so there is that; however, bear in mind those reactions come from the bottom of the barrel Marvel fans that go see everything Marvel and eat up whatever Feige throws at them.
For a comparison to a recent Marvel movie that has succeeded, Deadpool & Wolverine opened to over $211 million – so that means about 64% of those fans who went to see Deadpool & Wolverine didn’t bother going to see Thunderbolts.
For the record, I did like Thunderbolts. You can read my review here. It’s far from perfect, but there is some cool stuff for hardcore fans.
Feige’s M-She-U: A proven failure
The argument is that the Thunderbolts aren’t well-known (Guardians of the Galaxy opened to $127M with inflation factored in). I’d actually argue the problem is that Thunderbolts is another M-She-U movie.
Fans aren’t interested, and the female fans certainly aren’t showing up again. They didn’t show up for The Marvels, Black Widow, or any of the Disney+ shows. Yet they show up for Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, and Tom Holland. What’s that tell you?
Why didn’t Feige have Winter Soldier as the star of Thunderbolts? Good question (I think we all know the answer).
Marvel getting an overhaul
Things have been so bad post-Endgame that in a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, it’s revealed that Feige is overhauling Marvel “to get the the studio back on track.”
The report offers the following:
In his introduction to the screening that night, “Thunderbolts” director Jake Schreier said: “When I first started on the movie, Kevin said, ‘Make it different.’ ” This weekend’s box-office receipts will show whether that’s what Marvel fans want.
It’s pretty clear Marvel fans don’t want Thunderbolts. Maybe that’s why they were so quick to change names.
