Captain America: Brave New World may be projected to retain the top spot at the box office in its second weekend, but the film is expected to see a massive decline of over 67% in ticket sales, putting it on track to become one of the MCU’s biggest flops.
Earlier this week, Deadline suggested that the latest Captain America installment was poised to gross around $30 million domestically this weekend—a significant drop from its $100 million debut over the four-day Presidents’ Day weekend ($88.5 million over the traditional three-day weekend). However, since then, projections for this weekend have fallen even further. Brave New World, playing in 4,105 theaters, has earned $7.2 million on its second Friday, leading to a weekend total now estimated in the mid-to-high $20 million range.
Among Disney’s MCU movies, The Marvels holds the record for the worst second-weekend drop at -78% off a B CinemaScore. Brave New World’s score is not only the worst among all 35 MCU films but is also lower than any DC film released this decade. The only comic book movies with a worse CinemaScore are Sony’s, which have historically underperformed and have a blatantly lousy reputation.
If Brave New World reaches $29 million this weekend, it would mark a -67% decline. By at least reaching $20 million for the second weekend, the film would avoid being the worst-performing MCU movie, narrowly beating The Marvels, but it could still face a worse second-week drop than Quantumania’s 69.9%.
In 2023, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opened with $120.3 million over the Presidents’ Day holiday window. The film’s second-weekend gross stands at $31.9 million.
By the end of its ten-day run on Sunday, Captain America: Brave New World’s total domestic gross is projected to be around $142 million. The film has earned $211 million worldwide as of Saturday morning.
With a reported $180 million production budget, industry analysts suggest the film needs to gross at least $425 million to break even. If that figure is accurate, it already appears to be in a very weak position.
Considering that Ant-Man and the Wasp managed to surpass $600 million worldwide and the first Ant-Man movie still made over $500 million globally, Brave New World not exceeding $500 million would be an utter disaster. Given that this is Captain America—one of Marvel’s flagship heroes—$500 million is still not going to be enough and would nonetheless end up being classified as a massive flop, but anything below that would be an outright embarrassment and quite shambolic.
What makes this even worse is that there are no major releases in the near future, giving Brave New World a prime opportunity to succeed. Instead, it seems to be heading toward disaster, making its underperformance even more humiliating.