New Avengers: Thunderbolts Crashes With Huge 42% Drop After Discount Day Box Office Surge

As expected, the events unfolded just as I predicted, and after the discounted Tuesday screening, reality set in for New Avengers – Thunderbolts (or whatever you choose to call it), as it experienced a significant decline in ticket sales on Wednesday at the box office.

The upside? It’s still more enjoyable than “Captain America: Brave New World”, “The Marvels”, and “Eternals”. But let’s be honest, that doesn’t mean all that much.

What is the Wednesday box office?

The spoiler rebrand to New Avengers doesn’t seem to be making any difference whatsoever.

Following Tuesday, the box office dropped a massive 42.4% drop to $4.3M on Wednesday.

As I mentioned earlier, nobody caught Thunderbolts on Monday. Consequently, regardless of how many people go on Tuesday, you can expect a significant rise in attendance. Nevertheless, it’s essential to focus on the real figures, and unfortunately, they aren’t promising.

Similarly, it’s clear from the fact that MCU fans chose to wait until Tuesday for significant ticket discounts for Thunderbolts, that their enthusiasm and anticipation for the movie were rather subdued. This could very well be the reason behind Kevin Feige’s sudden rebranding on Monday, a decision that initially seemed peculiar.

What are the box office numbers?

At home, Thunderbolts reached a total of $91 million on Wednesday, marking the slowest progression towards the $100 million milestone, alongside The Marvels and Eternals. Captain America 4 achieved this milestone in just four days.

If “Thunderbolts” follows the pattern of “Captain America: Civil War,” it might end up with a budget of approximately $400 million, give or take. Considering the second weekends for “Eternals” and “Captain America: Civil War,” I’m anticipating a significant drop, potentially even higher than 60%, which would translate to a weekend two earnings of around $29 million to $30 million.

Just like the previously mentioned films, Thunderbolts is also facing a large budget issue, as it seems unlikely to recoup its costs. The budget for this film is estimated to be around $300 million or more when all expenses are accounted for. Disney will only receive half of the revenue from domestic box office sales and less than that from foreign earnings. Crunch the numbers and you’ll see. Furthermore, Disney has acknowledged that Captain America: Brave New World and Snow White have been financial flops as well.

What went wrong?

Not the New Avengers

In a nutshell, the Thunderbolts aren’t like the New Avengers we know from the movies. Instead, they seem to share some characteristics with the Dark Avengers from the comic books. This suggests that Kevin Feige might not fully grasp the preferences of his MCU viewers or the original comics.

Hello there! Just wanted to clarify that it wasn’t my fault we didn’t have a full house for “The New Avengers.” I caught an early showing of “Thunderbolts” on its opening Thursday, and I must say I enjoyed the movie. It seems though, about two-thirds of Marvel Cinematic Universe fans who attended the premiere of “Deadpool & Wolverine” haven’t made it to see “The New Avengers.

Nobody interested in the M-She-U

What’s the reason for Feige’s ongoing struggles? It seems to be due to the M-She-U, as the public doesn’t seem to be overly enthusiastic about characters like Florence Pugh as Yelena, Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel, Tatiana Maslany as She-Hulk, Hailee Steinfeld as Hawkeye, or Emilia Clarke as G’iah (who is less known). The intended female audience for these films hasn’t been consistently attending. It appears that more fanboys are showing up than fangirls. That’s a trend worth noting.

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What happened to the superheroes?

Yelena, similar to Black Widow, doesn’t possess any superpowers, and I’ll note that Yelena and the Thunderbolts film lack sex appeal. It’s expected of superheroes to be extraordinary, have special abilities, and yes, exude charm (it was recently confirmed that Marvel Rivals is a big deal by Disney!). However, despite promoting Thunderbolts and even attending its premiere, the actors displayed more allure than the rather uninteresting characters in the film. In fact, Florence herself playfully referred to her derriere!

It would have been more advantageous for Thunderbolts to primarily showcase Sebastian Stan’s character, the Winter Soldier, instead of focusing on Pugh and Yelena. Additionally, there should have been a greater emphasis on The Sentry. Unfortunately, that’s not how things turned out, isn’t it?

Coming up next is “Fantastic” Four, and it seems to offer more of the familiar. Has that strategy been successful so far? The saga of Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) mourns its end… #RIPMCU carries on…

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2025-05-09 00:50