Captain America: Brave New World opened over the holiday weekend to a domestic box office total of $100 million, with $88 million coming from its first three-day weekend and an additional $12 million from the extended double holiday. Internationally, the film grossed $92.4 million, bringing its worldwide total to $192.4 million. While many access media outlets are celebrating this as a major win for Disney Marvel, a closer look at the numbers and the film’s actual costs tells a very different story.
How Does Brave New World Compare to MCU’s Biggest Flops?
When stacking up Brave New World’s $88 million three-day opening against a list of MCU failures, the results are mixed at best.
- The Marvels – $46 million opening weekend
- Eternals – $71 million opening weekend
- Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – $106 million opening weekend
- Thor: The Dark World – $85 million opening weekend
- Iron Man 2 – $128 million opening weekend
Brave New World sits between Eternals and Quantumania, both of which were considered major disappointments for Marvel Studios. Yes, it performed nearly twice as well as The Marvels, which flopped with only $206 million worldwide, but is that really the benchmark for success now?
It also barely scraped by critical disappointments Thor: The Dark World and lost to Iron Man 2, both of which came out when movie tickets were much cheaper.
We’ll talk more about inflation in a moment…
Captain America/Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) in Marvel Studios’ CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 MARVEL.
In 2011, when The First Avenger debuted, the average movie ticket cost $7.93. In 2025, the average ticket price is $10.78. In the time between 2011 and 2025, inflation has gone up roughly 41.6%. So, adjusted for inflation, The First Avenger’s $65 million opening would equate to $93.5 million today, surpassing Brave New World’s $88 million.
Brave New World was also in just about every IMAX, Dolby, and 4DX theater in the country this week, and those tickets are even more expensive. When The First Avenger came out, many theaters didn’t have an IMAX screen and 3D was starting to become more widespread.
This means Brave New World failed to outdraw a film released 14 years ago when the MCU was still in its infancy. It might be the third highest earning Captain America movie of all time, but it had the smallest audience.
The Budget Controversy
Perhaps the most contentious issue surrounding Brave New World is its actual production budget. Many access media outlets, including The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline, have cited a $180 million budget, claiming that the film’s break-even point is around $425 million. This figure has been parroted by other outlets, including Culture Crave.
Harrison Ford as the Red Hulk in Captain America: Brave New World – YouTube, Marvel Entertainment
However, industry insiders and respected journalists have called out this number as misleading. Jordan Ruimy of World of Reel, one of the first to report on the film’s ballooning budget, stated:
“Now, of course Brave New World didn’t cost $180M. That’s simply too silly to believe. The actual budget was more than double that. I had reported the costs on the film to have risen to the $350M mark, and now other journalists are confirming this. Joanna Robinson and Dave Gonzalez, who wrote one of the most extensive MCU books, have been told that overruns and reshoots drove the Brave New World budget to $380M. With marketing costs added in, it’ll basically be impossible for the film to turn a profit.”
WDWPro, Hollywood scooper and publisher of That Park Place was another loud voice in the media pushing the actual cost of this film. He challenged Culture Crave when the outlet repeated the $180 million figure, forcing them to admit that their numbers did not include print and advertising costs.
Forbes had an article on what was spent for UK productions and it was less for the original one (some of them they didn’t factor in the tax incentives, P&A def isnt factored)
Havent seen a report yet on Cap 4 P&A, im sure it was quite a lot https://t.co/sZYrsVnOLv pic.twitter.com/RbeFFcitbm
— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) February 18, 2025
With four rounds of reshoots and extensive marketing campaigns, most analysts still believe Brave New World’s true cost is between $350 million and $375 million. When factoring in marketing and theater cuts, the film would need to gross around $900 million worldwide just to break even.
Can Brave New World Reach Profitability?
The film’s $192.4 million global opening is nowhere near what it needed to be. Given its steep budget, Brave New World faces a long uphill battle to profitability, especially with its lukewarm reception.
The movie earned a B- CinemaScore, the lowest in MCU history, signaling poor word-of-mouth that could significantly impact its second weekend drop. Other recent MCU films like The Marvels and Quantumania saw dramatic drop-offs after their opening weekends, and Brave New World could be poised for a similar fate.
While Disney and Marvel might attempt to spin these numbers as a win, the reality is far less optimistic. If Brave New World experiences a substantial second-weekend decline, its box office potential could evaporate quickly. Given the film’s troubled production, bloated budget, and divisive reception, turning a profit seems increasingly unlikely.
Anthony Mackie behind the scenes of Marvel Studios’ CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD. Photo by Eli Adé. © 2024 MARVEL.
The MCU’s golden era, where billion-dollar grosses were almost guaranteed, appears to be a thing of the past. And with Brave New World struggling right out of the gate, it raises serious questions about the future of the franchise and whether audiences are growing tired of Marvel’s formula.
For now, Captain America: Brave New World sits in a precarious box office position. It opened higher than The Marvels but far below the franchise’s peak. With an inflated budget and growing audience fatigue, this might be another costly lesson for Marvel Studios—and a clear signal that the MCU’s best days are behind it.
What’s your take on the Captain America: Brave New World box office? Sound off in the comments and let us know!
Adjusting for inflation is hard for the woke when they spent so many years of Biden’s term pretending inflation wasn’t happening.
I didn’t really care about whatever copes they asspulled to make it sound like a success or a failure. The reality is they were going to make it sound like a success no matter what. It’s funny how certain movies these days seem to be massive successes, yet there seems to be very few people that actually saw the movies in question. Regardless, I’m making the prediction that everyone that actually wanted to see this dumpster fire has now done so, and that this movie will set the record for the biggest drop-off in weekend to weekend profits and ticket sales in the MCU history.
[…] Fonte: thatparkplace […]
Access media *needs* to try and spin this as somehow positive. That’s literally their job; they get early access in exchange for shilling for the studios, no matter the cost. If they fail to convince the audiences that a movie is anything but a failure, they lose that access and wind up with nothing. They don’t have any pride, so that access is literally all they have.
From what I’ve seen from the reactions and reviews, the second week dropoff is going to be something to behold.