The Disney Grooming Syndicate’s latest Marvel product, Captain America: Brave New World, imploded during its second weekend of release with an estimated 68 percent box office drop.
This puts the troubled production – that reportedly cost as much as $350 million – in the same territory as previous Marvel flops like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels, which dropped off by 70 percent and 78 percent respectively during their second weekend in theaters.
The problem here is obvious: the repeat business is not there. What propels a movie into box office glory, especially a superhero movie, is repeat business. Brave New World earned a dreadful (for a superhero movie) B- CinemaScore. Even Marvel failures like The Marvels, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and The Eternals earned a B CinemaScore.
Brave New World’s B- is the lowest CinemaScore in Marvel’s two-decade history.
What that means is that the people who were most eager to see Brave New World, those who saw it opening weekend, didn’t much care for it. So why would they go back to experience it again?
I found the movie bad to mediocre without a single inspiring moment.
Counting this weekend, by Monday Brave New World’s total domestic gross will sit somewhere around a pathetic $140 million. This is especially pathetic when you consider there has been no real competition in theaters since Brave New World’s release ten days ago. Right now, the fourth chapter in the Captain America franchise could fail to hit $200 million domestic and $500 million worldwide, which means Disney will lose a fortune when it needs at least $650 to $750 million to break even.
Two more Marvel releases hit theaters this year, and neither represents Marvel’s A team: Thunderbolts arrives on May 2, and Fantastic Four: First Steps on July 25.
After the record success of everything leading up to 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, Marvel got arrogant and believed it could get away with going woke. The results have been catastrophic and couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of child predators.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.