Marvel's Thunderbolts Eyes An Eternals-Sized Opening At The Box Office

The summer movie season is nearly upon us and it can't come soon enough. The first chunk of 2025 has been very rough at the box office. Even after "A Minecraft Movie" posted a $314 million global opening, the domestic box office is trailing about 5% behind 2024. We're also miles behind pre-pandemic levels. So, can the Marvel Cinematic Universe help get us back on the right track with "Thunderbolts" in May? In the early going, it looks like the answer could be yes, but it's going to rely on Marvel delivering a crowd-pleaser of old, as opposed to something more divisive.

Early tracking suggests that director Jake Schreier's "Thunderbolts" will open between $63 and $77 million domestically, per The Hollywood Reporter. So we're looking at over/under $70 million, which would certainly be on the lower end for a summer MCU title. That said, this is also a new franchise without many A-list characters to speak of (outside of Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier). For the most part, this is a group of B-tier characters leading a team without nearly as much name recognition as the Avengers. So we shouldn't expect an "Avengers" level opening here. Tracking suggests something closer to "Eternals."

2021's "Eternals" opened to $71.2 million and finished its run with just over $400 million worldwide. That said, director Chloé Zhao's ambitious team-up film was met with a divisive response and came at a time when the pandemic was still hindering moviegoing. That's not an issue now. What is an issue is the MCU's uneven slate during the Multiverse Saga. We've had super high highs like "Spider-Man: No Way Home" ($1.9 billion worldwide/$260.1 million opening) and low lows like "The Marvels" ($206.1 million worldwide/$46.1 million opening).

In recent years, the average Marvel blockbuster costs much closer to $200 million than $150 million to produce. So, in the case of "Thunderbolts," Disney really needs this movie to do more than $400 million worth of business. That's very much in the cards, assuming moviegoers like the movie enough. 

"Thunderbolts" centers on a group of not-quite-heroes, not-quite-villains who find themselves ensnared on a dangerous mission. The core group consists of Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and, John Walker (Wyatt Russell). Lewis Pullman ("Top Gun: Maverick") is also on board as a new-to-the-MCU character from the pages of Marvel Comics, Sentry.

The MCU has struggled to maintain consistency in recent years, and the pattern is surprisingly simple. Crowd-pleasers like "Deadpool & Wolverine" ($1.33 billion worldwide/$211.4 million opening) can rise above the noise and deliver huge hits, while movies with a "meh" reception such as this year's "Captain America: Brave New World" ($413.1 million worldwide/$88.8 million opening) fail to live up to expectations. It all comes down to the response from general audiences.

Though there was a time when MCU movies were more or less guaranteed box office hits, the days of a movie like "Thor: The Dark World" being able to get to $644 million worldwide are gone. That's why a movie like "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" finished with a disappointing $476 million globally after opening to a hugely promising $106.1 million. The bar for convincing audiences to leave the house has been raised, and the "wait to stream" mentality has taken root for anything less than greatness in the realm of superhero movies.

In short, if audiences love "Thunderbolts," there's no reason it can't do "Doctor Strange" ($677.7 million worldwide/$85 million opening) numbers. $70 million or more could absolutely set this movie up for success. And these are still early numbers. Add positive reviews from critics to this movie's side, and those numbers could easily go up come May. 

"Thunderbolts" hits theaters on May 2, 2025.