After a quiet 2024, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was supposed to make a big, explosive comeback in 2025. Unfortunately, not everything has gone according to plan during the first months of the year. While the Disney Plus projects, such as Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and Daredevil: Born Again, premiered to a raving critical reception, the same can't be said for Marvel's first theatrical venture of 2025: Captain America: Brave New World.
Cap's movie only grossed $413 million on a budget of around $180 million without accounting for marketing expenses and reshoots — which, at best, means that it barely made a profit. At worst? Disney had another loss on its hands. Furthermore, Daredevil's numbers haven't necessarily exceeded expectations either. The series' opening gathered 7.5 million viewers, which is still an impressive number considering its 18+ rating, yet it falls short compared to the 10.9 million viewers for the first episode of Loki season 2. Marvel's record hasn't been impecable as of late, and its next major release isn't looking so promising either.
Thunderbolts* tracking a $70 million opening weekend
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Thunderbolts* is tracking to have an opening within the $63 million to $77 million range, with a likely target of $70 million. To put that number into perspective, only five MCU movies had a lower opening: The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, Ant-Man, and, more recently, The Marvels. You'll notice that four out of those five projects were released from 2008 to 2015, which is a key factor because the box office numbers during their opening weekends would be higher today if we were to adjust for inflation. For instance, The Incredible Hulk's opening of $55.4 million would be equivalent to $82.3 million in 2025, which would surpass the estimations for Thunderbolts*.
Does that mean we expect yet another loss for Disney? Well, there are a few things to take into consideration to answer that. For starters, we don't know what the budget for Thunderbolts* is. While some claim it's around $200 million (which is a pretty standard practice for Marvel films nowadays), others say it's the cheapest movie out of Phase 5, which includes Captain America: Brave New World and its reported budget of $180 million. Without knowing how much exactly was spent on creating Thunderbolts*, it becomes difficult to say how alarming a $70 million opening projection is. Besides, we need to remember that the film has been gathering extremely positive reactions at early screenings.
Superhero movies are often known for having big weekend-to-weekend earning drops (something that recently affected Captain America: Brave New World), and that rule often seems to apply for projects with poor critical receptions. If Thunderbolts* turns out to be one of Marvel's greatest movies to date, perhaps its weekend-to-weekend drop can be quite small, which would lead to it having a great box office in the long run. Whether we like to admit it or not, that review score has a big impact on the success of any big screen project and, at least on that front, Thunderbolts* seems to have the upper hand.
It's hard to deny that things aren't looking promising for the new group of heroes on the block. However, Marvel could surprise us all and have a team-up worthy of enjoying the levels of success of The Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. Fortunately, we won't have to wait too long to figure out if interest in superhero movies is winding down or if the MCU is actually back (yet again).
Thunderbolts* will be released on May 2, 2025.