AP:
Captain America: Brave New World infused some blockbuster cash into the North American box office, bringing in $88.5 million in ticket sales over the weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. The Walt Disney Co. release is by far the biggest opener of 2025 and the company predicts it will hit $100 million domestically and $192.4 globally by the end of Monday’s Presidents’ Day holiday.
It’s Marvel’s first major release since Deadpool & Wolverine broke records last summer and re-energised a Marvel fanbase that some worried was weakening after the poor showing for The Marvels.
Playing in 4,105 locations in the US and Canada, Brave New World is also a major transition for the Captain America brand. Anointing Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson as the new Cap, officially taking over from Chris Evans, who played the character for almost a decade. Harrison Ford co-stars as the US president who transforms into the Red Hulk.
But Brave New World, directed by Julius Onah, had a bit of a handicap going into the weekend: Poor reviews, though superhero movies can soar without the stamp of approval from critics. The film is currently sitting at 51 per cent “rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s not the worst in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – Eternals has a 47 per cent rating and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania has a 46 per cent – but the latest film is definitely on the very low end of the spectrum.
In his review for The Associated Press, Mark Kennedy wrote that it is, “a highly processed, empty calorie, regret-later candy of a movie”.
Audiences were more generous in their opinions. The “verified audience score” from Rotten Tomatoes was 80 per cent and its CinemaScore was a B-. Exit polls showed that men made up 63 per cent of the opening weekend audience.
The bar for biggest opening of the year wasn’t terribly high: Dog Man held the title for two weeks with its $36 million launch.
Second place at this week’s box office went to Paddington in Peru, the third installment in the beloved franchise, which finally opened in North America this weekend. Released by Sony, it earned an estimated $13 million. The StudioCanal film opened in the United Kingdom in early November 2024 and went into the weekend with $104 million from its international run.
