It’s a virtual given that the 2025 summer box office will get off to bigger start than last year when Marvel’s Thunderbolts* flies into theaters over the first weekend of May. However, the antihero comic book pic still has its work cut out for it.
According to tracking, the tentpole is headed for a domestic debut in the $63 million to $77 million range, with a target number of $70 million. While a fair number in and of itself, that’s on the lower end for a Marvel Cinematic Universe title opening in summer.
Disney insiders say there’s plenty of room for growth, noting that the film’s rag-tag team of antiheroes and villains are making their appearance on the big screen for the first time, so aren’t a known property (advance ticket sales, which commenced earlier this week, are on the slower side so far). The studio says the response to the film has been strong among those treated to early screenings, as well as among theater owners, who saw footage of Thunderbolts* at CinemaCon last week. Several exhibitors, along with rival studio execs, told THR the film looks potentially fun and appealing.
And Thunderbolts* got a major shout out late last month when Marvel revealed that a good chunk of the cast will be in Avengers: Doomsday.
Disney’s well-oiled marketing machine has three weeks left to unleash the heart of the campaign for the movie, which stars Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Hannah John-Kamen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, among others.
“Everyone deserves a second shot” is the tagline for the feature, which Marvel describes this way with its logline: “Marvel Studios assembles an unconventional team of antiheroes — Yelena Belova (Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Stan), Red Guardian (Shostakov), Ghost (John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Kurylenko)and John Walker (Russell). After finding themselves ensnared in a death trap set by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Dreyfuss), these disillusioned castoffs must embark on a dangerous mission that will force them to confront the darkest corners of their pasts. Will this dysfunctional group tear themselves apart, or find redemption and unite as something much more before it’s too late?”
Marvel and Disney are leaning into the creative team’s indie roots in selling Thunderbolts* as something other than the usual MCU title. The pic is directed by Jake Schreier, known for the A24-produced Netflix show Beef and 2012’s Robot & Frank.
“It ended up becoming this quite badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes,” Pugh told Empire magazine in a recent joint interview with Thunderbolt‘s cast and crew. Schreier added he was advised to make the film “something different.” He added, “There’s a certain amount of that Beef tone in it, that does feel different. There’s an emotional darkness that we brought to this that is resonant, but doesn’t come at the expense of comedy.”
Universal’s The Fall Guy, which kicked off the summer box office last year, drove off the road its domestic debut with $27 million.
Tracking is hardly scientific in the digital age. Often, numbers can be wildly off. Marvel’s pandemic-era MCU entry Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, came on tracking at $45 million but opened to more than $75 million in September 2021. Last summer’s Twisters, from Universal, was tracking for a $55 million debut; instead it opened to $81 million in early July.