Weekend predictions: Captain America looking at solid opening for Marvel

Captain America: Brave New World looks set to post a solid opening this weekend, with our model predicting something around $80 million over three days, and the film likely topping $90 million over the long weekend. While that’s well short of the sort of numbers posted during the heyday of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s a big improvement over the $46 million earned by The Marvels on its opening weekend in November 2023. Meanwhile, Paddington in Peru will provide some counter-programming, and likely be a big draw for families on Monday.

Here’s the model’s fundamentals prediction for Captain America…

The prediction is complicated by the fact that our model thinks the market is very weak coming out of the post-Holiday period, but its prediction is broadly in line with the industry consensus.

The preview numbers also look solid…

A three-day weekend in the 80s looks likely for the new Captain America. That’ll cause some sighs of relief on the Disney lot this morning. With a trimmed budget compared to previous Marvel outings (reportedly $180 million), and a more grounded approach to story-telling, this is something of a reset for the franchise. While reviews aren’t great, the audience response is relatively positive so far, and it should hold well through the weekend.

Paddington in Peru continues the saga of the British bear under the wing of its third different distributor. That’s an unusual situation for a successful franchise, and the result of the film series’ international popularity compared to the US.

Its preview number looks about right, although previews should always be taken with a grain of salt for family films thanks to their unusually high multipliers—the first Paddington movie earned over 100 times its Thursday number on its first weekend, for example!

$11 million for the weekend looks about right for this one, but it should hold very well over four days, and is likely to have excellent legs based on its genre and reviews.

Here’s what the model thinks the top 10 will look like.

This weekend is all about Captain America, which should drive about three quarters of business in movie theaters. One film not on our predictions list is Becoming Led Zeppelin, which had a great weekend in IMAX theaters last weekend, and expands to regular theaters this weekend. We don’t have a theater count for that one, and it could well hit the top 10 again.

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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com