Thunderbolts* stormed to $11.5 million in Thursday previews in a promising start for Marvel’s ensemble superhero pic.
The star-studded movie, led by Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan, kicks off the summer box office in what’s become a tradition for Kevin Feige‘s studio. The pic is winning over critics and audiences alike; as of Friday morning, Thunderbolts* boasted a 95 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, one of the top four scores for a title in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Tracking suggests the movie will open in the $70 million to $73 million range domestically, and $160 million to $175 million globally, against a $180 million production budget before marketing. Word of mouth could see that number climb higher and indicate that the film has strong legs. As a way of comparison, Captain America: Brave New World had an audience RT score of 92 percent when opening to $88.8 million earlier this year. (That film’s critics score was a rotten 48 percent, compared to a glowing 89 percent for Thunderbolts*.)
The unexpected spring bloom currently underway at the box office — led by Ryan Coogler’s sleeper sensation Sinners — proves that people want the communal experience of watching a film together.
Thunderbolts* is a pivotal moment for Marvel as it kicks off a new hoped-for franchise. Directed by Jake Schreier, the film brings together a band of dysfunctional outsiders — and lesser-known comic book characters — who discover their potential to be heroes when working together. Marvel and Disney are stressing that these are lessor-known characters.
In addition to Pugh (Yelena Belova) and Stan (Bucky Barnes), the movie features Wyatt Russell (John Walker), David Harbour (Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian), Lewis Pullman (Bob), Hannah John-Kamen (Ghost), Olga Kurylenko (Taskmaster) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (CIA director Valentine Allegra de Fontaine).
“Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan lead a gratifyingly fresh and soulful Marvel adventure,” The Hollywood Reporter‘s chief film critic David Rooney writes in his review. “While a handful of the characters and the actors playing them have appeared in previous entries, there’s a disarming freshness to this first-time assembly, not to mention something even more unexpected: heart. That’s due to an appealing ensemble cast but also to the new blood of a creative team with a distinctive take on the genre.”
In the film, Louis-Dreyfus’ villainous character has positioned a number of MCU loners and rejects to kill each other for her own nefarious reasons. But they instead decide to team up in response to the obvious setup. Newcomer Bob suffers from a mental illness that has catastrophic consequences after he’s subjected to cruel experimentation.
Overseas, Thunderbolts’ is opening everywhere timed to its release in North America, including in China.
