“The Marvels” is getting ready to take flight at the box office, but it won’t be as sky-high as its predecessor “Captain Marvel” and many of its fellow Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.
The latest MCU adventure has made $6.6 million in previews at the box office. “The Marvels” is expected to make between $60 million and $65 million in its opening this weekend. It’s a far cry from Brie Larson’s first MCU outing as Captain Marvel, which opened to $153 million in 2019 from $20.7 million in Thursday previews. That movie, which ended up crossing the $1 billion mark, had the added bonus of releasing between “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame” and was the first female-led MCU film.
The “Captain Marvel” sequel is also expected to fall below this year’s two previous Marvel movies, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” which made $104 million and $118 million in their opening, respectively. They each made $17.5 million in Thursday previews.
The only MCU movies with smaller opening weekends than the projections for “The Marvels” are 2008’s “Incredible Hulk” ($55.4 million) and 2015’s “Ant-Man” ($57.2 million), not adjusted for inflation. That may spell trouble for “The Marvels,” which cost $220 million to produce and roughly $100 million to promote. At the international box office, it’s estimated to make $80 million for a global start of $140 million or more.
Larson returns in “The Marvels,” which co-stars Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau and Iman Vellani as the young hero Ms. Marvel. Parris and Vellani originated their roles on the Disney+ shows “WandaVision” and “Ms. Marvel,” respectively, which makes “The Marvels” their characters’ big-screen debuts. The trio of women team up to battle the latest world-threatening villain Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), who wields the power to rip holes in the fabric of space and time.