'Captain America 4' Box Office: When a $40 Million Friday Isn't Good Enough...
A decade ago, a 'Captain America' sequel earning a $40 million opening day would be an affirmation of success for Marvel. Today, amid poor reviews and terrible word-of-mouth, it's cause for alarm.
We’ve been here before, mind you. Yes, it felt odd writing about the respective $53 million opening weekends of Watchmen in 2009 and Green Lantern in 2011 as examples of box office failure while explaining what went wrong and what peril lay ahead. The same goes for the $94 million Fri-Sun debut of Justice League in 2017, although that was more about how expensive reshoots inflated the budget to the point that a $658 million global total qualified as a high-grossing disaster. Heck, the (to quote Al Pacino’s Jimmy Hoffa in The Irishman) “You dumb motherfuckers!” reaction to the $103 million Fri-Mon launch of Solo in 2018 was about A) again engaging in absolutely useless reshoots that ballooned the budget and B) overseas audiences unsurprisingly not giving two shits about a Han Solo prequel movie.
When the stars aren’t aligned, and the precedent isn’t in a given tentpole’s favor, it must earn as much as possible before the bottom falls out. We’re usually discussing superhero movies, like Amazing Spider-Man 2’s “mere” $92 million Fri-Sun weekend in 2014, within this context. It’s usually (but not always… see Pixar’s Lightyear in 2022) the superhero cinematic universes impacted by this “opened with an objectively large amount of money, but the franchise or brand is fucked” circumstance. If a stand-alone movie, or a “one movie at a time” franchise offering, opens huge despite poor reviews and weak CinemaScore grades with all signs pointing to a quick collapse, darn? But a $40 million Friday for Captain America: Brave New World? Maybe don’t make your “Anthony Mackie is Captain America now!” movie a belabored sequel to The Incredible Hulk.