The Marvel Cinematic Universe has rarely had a difficult time at the box office and recent films have been no exception. Spider-Man: No Way Home broke records and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is heading toward the $1 billion mark. So the question now is, will Thor: Love and Thunder do as well? The movie is off to a strong start, as it has already grossed nearly $16 million in its first day overseas, ahead of what could be a big opening weekend globally.
Thor: Love and Thunder has already opened in some territories and Deadline reports the film brought in $15.7 million in its first day in nations including Korea, Australia, Italy and Germany. That puts the movie in the number one spot across the board, and also ahead of Thor: Ragnarok when compared in the same regions.
That being said, Thor: Love and Thunder is currently trending to have a slower opening than Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. That film saw a domestic opening weekend of just short of $190 million. Thor 4 is currently expected to have an opening somewhere in the $150 million range, with a low end prediction of about $135 million and a high end of $165 million. That will also improve on the importance of the last Thor film, which opened with $122 million. The film is expected to do another $150 million or so internationally, leading to a solid $300 million global opening weekend.
While Thor: Love and Thunder may be trending a little lower than other previous MCU movies, I doubt anybody at Marvel Studios is going to be breaking a sweat, especially if it does become the most successful Thor movie to date. Love and Thunder is going to be a success by basically any metric, including the audiences returning to theaters in the wake of the pandemic metric, even if it doesn’t go down as one of the most successful Marvel movies ever.
Thor: Love and Thunder has the same benefits that the Doctor Strange sequel had in that it’s opening in a period where fewer movie fans are considering the global pandemic as a hurdle to going to the theater, and the movie is a sequel with a character that fans already know and like. Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings are movies that had a much harder time, both because they were introducing new characters, and they came out last year. Although Shang-Chi still put up sequel-worthy numbers.
This is only good news for Marvel Studios’ future. All five of the forthcoming Marvel movies that currently have release dates are sequels of one form or another, which would seem to indicate that significant box office success is in their future.
