Thunderbolts* Tracking to be Another Marvel Dud

Movies

Marvel’s next superhero team doesn’t look like it’ll measure up to the Avengers – in more ways than one. Now that Captain America: Brave New World has come and gone, the next MCU movie to hit theaters in 2025 will be Thunderbolts*, the latest head-scratcher from an increasingly adrift studio that joins a bunch of supporting characters together as a team (which, depending on how Doomsday shakes out, could be what happens with the next version of the Avengers, too). The new group of heroes features such beloved favorites as Ghost, Red Guardian, gender-swapped Taskmaster, US Agent, and Yelena Belova; the only one with the slightest cachet with the audience is Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier. Thunderbolts* is opening in theaters on May 2, which is a big deal because the first weekend in May is the official start of the summer movie season (I’m old enough to remember when it steadily moved back from Memorial Day weekend until they finally had to stop). The MCU debuted films like Iron Man and The Avengers in that slot, and previous summer kickstarters included The Mummy, Gladiator, Spider-Man, and X2: X-Men United. But the modern era is not exactly the golden age of ticket sales, and Marvel is not the box office juggernaut it was just a few years ago, so Thunderbolts* is set to open the 2025 summer movie season with a whimper.

According to That Park Place, Thunderbolts* is tracking for a $65-85 million opening weekend, meaning that even the high end would put it slightly below Brave New World. And I doubt it will reach the high end, as Brave New World – which had “Captain America” in the title, however erroneously – debuted on the low end of its own tracking, which put it between $86-95 million for three days. (Brave New World was released on President’s Day weekend, so its fourth day counted as part of the weekend and brought its total up to $100 million; Thunderbolts* will not have that extra push.) That doesn’t bode well for a movie nobody’s talking about featuring characters most people barely remember exist, plus Bucky. It’s also possible that the tracking will lower over the three weeks before Thunderbolts* premieres, with the initial estimates overestimating a movie that will generate little to no buzz. Advanced tickets just went on sale today, so in a couple of days, we’ll be able to see how well it’s doing compared to the pre-sales for other Marvel films, and I don’t expect a sunny forecast. I just checked my local theater and a few in Manhattan, and let’s just say I don’t feel the need to reserve my seat right away.

What this lackluster debut means for Marvel is the same thing most of the box office results the studio has gotten in the last few years have meant: this brand doesn’t sell anymore. During the MCU’s first three phases, Thunderbolts* would’ve been a blockbuster because the Marvel name was a sign of quality; they had a good track record, and people trusted them to make good movies, so they went to see oddball stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, Marvel needs familiar characters people love, like Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine; that’s why Avengers: Doomsday is advertising a bunch of the actors from the Fox X-Men movies returning to support Shang-Chi, Sam Wilson, Shuri, and, to bring this back to the topic, the Thunderbolts. (Do I use the asterisk when referring to the team or just the title of the movie?) When they don’t have that, interest disappears, and that’s because the Marvel movies have mostly been awful recently; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was all set to be a dud before word-of-mouth got around and told reluctant moviegoers Marvel had finally made a good one again. If Thunderbolts* ends up being a great movie, or even just a decent one, the same thing may happen, and I think Marvel will need maybe three of those in a row before they start to build back the trust they gleefully set on fire. But I don’t see Thunderbolts* having the kind of legs Guardians 3 had – mostly because I’ve seen the trailers, where Red Guardian makes a fool of himself, the awful humor forces itself into car chases, and drama is once again undercut by desperate pleas for laughs. Doomsday and Secret Wars had better be spectacular.

Let us know what you think of the Thunderbolts* tracking in the comments!

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