Weekend Box Office: New CAPTAIN AMERICA Marks Another President’s Day Weekend Win For the MCU – Boxoffice Pro
Source: Boxoffice Pro
Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Brave New World had a lot going for it including Anthony Mackie’s fan fav Sam Wilson donning the stars and stripes, icon Harrison Ford climbing aboard as President Ross/Red Hulk, and a political thriller plot reminiscent of beloved entry Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It also had the same Black History Month release slot Black Panther garnered $202M domestic 7 years ago, with plenty of runway until the next big tentpole -Disney’s live-action Snow White– on March 21.
The superhero movie wound up at #1 with an estimated $88.5M 3-Day domestic total alongside a projected $100M 4-Day President’s Day holiday gross on 4,105 screens for a $21,559 Per Screen Average. That’s easily the biggest debut of the year as well as the fourth-best President’s Day gross ever. The top single theater in the country was AMC Disney Springs in Orlando with over $172K. No matter how Cap ultimately does for the studio, it drove overall theatrical business to nearly 50% above this same frame in 2024 when Bob Marley: One Love was the top film.
Here’s how the 3-Day looked, with $12M in Thursday previews…
While this is actually on the higher-end of our prediction panel’s estimates going into the weekend, it’s not necessarily the best when grading on the Marvel Cinematic Universe curve. This studio has had 20 of their 35 films open over $100M for the 3-Day, including their first movie Iron Man in 2008. Brave New World opened to far less than the last Captain America movie, 2016’s Civil War ($179.1M), although that was more of an ensemble Avengers movie. That $88.5M 3-Day is also considerably less than the $106.1M that Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania opened to on Feb 17 of 2023. Quantumania also earned the ire of critics and fans, then wound up dropping 70% in its second weekend with $31.9M, leading to a box office freefall. The first two Captain America movies debuted with $65M and $95M, respectively, with over a decade of inflation not being taken into account. The new Cap adventure opened in closest proximity to other MCU sequels like 2013’s Thor: The Dark World ($85.7M, $206.3M domestic total) and 2016’s Doctor Strange ($85M, $232.6M domestic total).
With audiences split 63% male to 37% female, here’s how age demos looked…
While the MCU has had much lower debuts, especially post-COVID, the real bad news on this title has been critical and audience response. Brave New World bears one of the lowest Rotten Tomatoes critical scores for any MCU movie at 51% rotten, with only Eternals (47%) and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (46%) being lower. It’s also the lowest-scoring MCU movie ever on Metacritic. A consistent complaint was that the movie pulled too many punches within its overtly political milieu, and was too down the middle/safe for its own good. The audience was not much kinder, earning a “B-” CinemaScore which is now the lowest-ever such score for an MCU movie. That’s troubling when you consider box office losers Eternals, The Marvels, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania all got “B” grades and the first three Captain America films all received an “A” or “A-” score. RT audience score on Brave New World is a moderate 80%, on-par with The Marvels, while PostTrak was 3 stars with kids under 12 at 4 1/2 stars.
Outside factors played against the film during production, including being delayed from a prime summer 2024 slot to the dog days of February, having been shot prior to the post-Marvels creative reset at the studio, lots of reshoots/rejiggering that reportedly never helped test scores, as well as a peculiar reliance on characters and events from less-loved MCU entries like The Incredible Hulk and Eternals. Disney+ streaming The Falcon and The Winter Soldier series was a great way to ramp up to Anthony Mackie taking up the mantle of Captain America from Chris Evans… except that show ended four years ago.
Overseas the grosses were slightly better, with $92.4M in international dollars for a worldwide total of $192.4M over the 4-Day. The Top 3 markets were China ($10.5M), the UK ($8.5M), and Mexico ($6.6M). An estimated $18M of that 4-Day global number came from over 1,500 IMAX screens in 82 markets, with $10.5M of that from North America, around 10% of the gross here. An additional 21% came from PLFs, with another 4% from Motion (2D & 3D) and ScreenX showings. Combined, these PLFs and IMAX screens accounted for 37% of business. Comparing to Quantumania once again, that one did $121.3M internationally on opening weekend.
After being out overseas since November, Sony launched its family counter-programming against Captain America with Paddington in Peru, the third film in the live-action Paddington series began in 2014. It took second place with $13M in 3,890 locations for a $3,342 PSA, only a bit above the second frame of Heart Eyes ($10M, $3,224 PSA). That number is below our low-end forecast for this title and only a hair above Paddington 2‘s disappointing $11M debut in 2017.
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