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(CNN) — Marvel’s “Thunderbolts” electrified the box office, beating expectations with $76 million in domestic sales this weekend.
While not the massive opening weekend numbers that Marvel movies once posted, “Thunderbolts” beat expectations by about 8% and “sets into motion” a new chapter for Marvel, says Paul Dergarabedian, a senior analyst at Comscore.
“Between this, ‘Fantastic Four’ and then the other Marvel movies coming down the pipeline — particularly a year from now with ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ — Marvel’s set up for a real renaissance to get that Marvel magic going,” he told CNN.
Disney’s first Marvel film of the year, “Captain America: Brave New World,” grossed roughly $88.5 million domestically during the first three days of Presidents Day weekend.
Dergarabedian called Marvel a “good luck charm” for the summer movie season, which accounts for close to 40% of the full-year box office revenue, according to Comscore data. There wasn’t a Marvel film released in May 2024, Dergarabedian noted, and that in turn saw a slow start to the summer and record-low box office numbers on Memorial Day weekend.
“This is not among the biggest superhero launches we’ve had in the history of the genre. In general, superheroes are not doing the kind of business they did before the pandemic,” said David A. Gross, who publishes FranchiseRe, a newsletter on the box office. But it’s still “a very good opening,” he noted.
According to FranchiseRe data, Gross estimated that new superhero movies average about $55 million when opening, which is 41% less compared with 2015 to 2019.
Disney had another surprising box office win with the re-release of “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” which edged Warner Bros. Pictures and Amazon MGM Studios’ “The Accountant 2” for the No. 2 spot last weekend.
Warner Brothers Discovery is the parent company of CNN.
The success of the “Star Wars” film comes as studios have had to rethink what movies should be streamed or released in theaters.
Re-releases typically haven’t performed to this scale in roughly a decade, said Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at Fandango and founder of Box Office Theory. He added that this was one of the most popular of the prequels and has had two decades to become nostalgic for younger fans who missed seeing it on the big screen.
“‘Star Wars’ has always been the poster franchise of theatrical re-releases dating back to the early ’90s and that just speaks to the movie theater being a totally different experience,” he told CNN.
Warner Bros. has also given the box office a boost with the continued success of “Sinners” and “A Minecraft Movie,” which each snagged the No. 1 spot in their opening weekends. “Sinners” has now grossed $179 million domestically and “A Minecraft Movie” has grossed $398 million domestically, according to Comscore data.
“The buzz around ‘Sinners’ is so palpable that that’s not going to stop its roll for weeks to come. And having ‘Minecraft’ out there, there’s still something out for everybody,” Robbins said, adding, “It’s the kind of diverse release slate that the industry has been begging for for so long.”
The summer box office will be led by big sequels, remakes and family entertainment, Gross said. But next weekend won’t have much new competition, he said, so “Sinners,” “A Minecraft Movie” and “Thunderbolts” will continue to compete.
They’ll at least have long runs until Memorial Day weekend, when Disney’s live action “Lilo & Stitch” opens alongside Paramount Pictures’ “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”
“We’re going to have one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Memorial weekends ever, so this sets up that very nicely with ‘Thunderbolts,’” Dergarabedian told CNN.
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