Can Thunderbolts* Keep its Momentum at the Box Office?
With the (relative) soft opening for Thunderbolts*, can this movie have more power at the box office?
Marvel’s Thunderbolts* just opened to 74 million dollars at the domestic box office and 86 million dollars at the foreign box office, for a worldwide opening of 160 million. This opening is solid. Not bad and not good, somewhere in the middle. The problem is that the movie cost around 180 million to produce, so it needs to make at least 450-500 million just to break even.
I was wondering about the legs for this movie (legs mean drops at the box office). Will this movie have healthy legs, or will it just crush and burn after next weekend? This is the classic case of a good movie that needs to “pay the sins” of its predecessor. The same thing happened with the Transformers franchise. The fourth movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction, grossed over 1.1 billion dollars, but received very bad reviews (18% on Rotten Tomatoes), so the next movie, Transformers: The Last Knight (which was even worse) grossed 605 million, nearly half of its predecessor. Then, the great Bumblebee movie was released to incredible reviews, but people didn’t come and the movie grossed 468 million.
The same thing happened with this movie. People didn’t like Captain America: Brave New World (48% on Rotten Tomatoes, 415 million worldwide), but Thunderbolts* received great reviews (88% on Rotten Tomatoes, A- at Cinemascore). Despite it, people still remember that they didn’t like the didn’t like the last movie, so they didn’t bother to check the new one. That’s why even if your bad movie is making tons of money, it can really hurt you, especially if you’re aiming for a long and healthy franchise.
I think that as long as the movie will drop around 40-50% in the domestic box office, it should be fine. The main problem is the overseas box office. Marvel movies have used to make banks overseas, but for some reason, people are not going to Thunderbolts*. I think that everything above 400 million will make Disney/Marvel happy, even if it won’t break even (theatrically at least). The big problem is Sinners: People are still rushing it, and last weekend it dropped only 28%, this is the real competitor against Thunderbolts*.
We’ll have better knowledge about the box office future of this movie after this upcoming weekend.