Seven months ago, “Deadpool & Wolverine” became the highest grossing R-rated film of all time and the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since “Spider-Man: No Way Home” to gross more than $1 billion worldwide. Now it’s up to “Captain America: Brave New World” to continue that momentum.
Anthony Mackie’s first film with the red, white and blue shield doesn’t need to reach that $1 billion mark to achieve that goal, but a sustained theatrical run fueled by strong fan approval and general audience word-of-mouth is essential. In other words, the opposite of what “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” did when it opened to $120.3 million over four days only to make just $94 million in the remainder of its domestic run.
That momentum will need to be seen throughout Marvel’s 2025 slate, which also includes “Thunderbolts*” in May and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” in July. All three films are intended to lead up to next year’s “Avengers: Doomsday,” which Disney hopes will make Marvel’s recent inconsistency a thing of the past with the return of franchise founding father Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom.
With ticket presales currently 10-15% behind “Quantumania,” “Captain America: Brave New World” is currently projected for an $80-85 million 3-day opening weekend, with the total rising to $90-95 million with Presidents’ Day included. Such a start would be a solid one for Disney and Marvel and a much needed one for theaters, representing the biggest opening weekend since the record-setting launch of “Moana 2” on Thanksgiving weekend.
Unfortunately for Marvel, the first reviews for “Captain America: Brave New World” are not great — the film sits at 52% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing. That puts the film in a position where it will have to buck the trend started by “Quantumania” and “The Marvels,” which earned similar RT scores and went on to receive a B from opening night audiences on CinemaScore, a result that became a sign of rapid box office decline in the ensuing weekends.
In terms of recent Marvel releases, “Brave New World” would be firmly between the $118 million opening of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” and the anemic $46 million opening of “The Marvels,” both released in 2023. But accurate comps within the MCU are hard to come by because of the nature of this “Captain America” film.
It has been a decade since Anthony Mackie made his Marvel debut as Sam Wilson, a.k.a. The Falcon, in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”; and it has been nearly four years since Marvel fans first saw him wield the shield as the new Cap in the final episode of the Disney+ series “Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”
That level of familiarity for Sam makes it difficult to compare “Brave New World” to movies like “Shang-Chi” or “Eternals” that introduce completely new characters to the MCU. But as Harrison Ford says in the TV spots for the film, Sam Wilson is not Steve Rogers, and that makes any comparison for “Brave New World” to past “Captain America” films inexact as well.
So what would be a successful theatrical run for Mackie’s big screen debut as a Marvel leading man? Disney insiders tell TheWrap that a $200 million-plus domestic, $500 million-plus global run would be a win in their eyes. That mark has been chosen based on the $424 million global total earned by “Quantumania” at current exchange rates and excluding China and Russia, as well as the $479 million global total of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” using those same metrics. Globally, “Brave New World” is projected for a $190 million start this weekend.
Again, success will not be determined by a single weekend alone. But the fact that such metrics are being set at a half-billion mark that the MCU once easily cleared with each new installment shows how much things have changed for the franchise and for the theatrical business as a whole. It’s worth noting that the $479 million total listed above for “The Winter Soldier” is not adjusted for the considerable inflation that has been seen since its release in 2014.
“Deadpool & Wolverine” showed that success for Marvel is still very much possible, but “The Marvels” showed that failure is no longer an impossibility, meaning that the MCU now has to play by the same rules as every other Hollywood franchise trying to maintain widespread interest in a changing entertainment landscape.
Also opening this weekend is Sony/StudioCanal’s “Paddington in Peru,” the third installment in the wildly acclaimed “Paddington” series. Produced by StudioCanal on a $90 million budget, the film is projected for a $15-17 million 4-day opening, which would be similar to the $15 million 4-day opening of “Paddington 2” back on MLK weekend in 2018.
Sony initially set the film for MLK weekend, but pushed it back to February to give it distance from the flurry of family holiday hits like “Mufasa” and “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” that were dominating the market while giving the film some runway as a top offering for parents and kids between now and the mid-March release of Disney’s “Snow White.”
With Dougal Wilson replacing Paul King as director, the critics’ consensus is that “Paddington in Peru” doesn’t quite hold up to its two predecessors but is still an enjoyable romp, giving the film a 93% Rotten Tomatoes score. Overseas, the film has already grossed $104 million, including $44 million in the United Kingdom. That run made it the highest grossing British production in the UK since the James Bond film “No Time to Die” in 2021.
