Love And Thunder’ Plunges 80% But Tops $200 Million

Walt Disney’s Thor: Love and Thunder is the top movie at the domestic box office yet again, earning $13.8 million on Friday. However, that’s a brutal 80% drop for the Chris Hemsworth/Natalie Portman sequel from its $69.5 million. In terms of MCU movies, that’s behind only the 82% drop for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness after a $91 million Friday. It’s on par with Black Widow (-79%) last July and Eternals (-75%) this past November. Alas, we’re likely looking at a $45 million weekend and a $233 million ten-day total, still solid by most rational standards but a record (for Marvel) 68% second-weekend plunge. With any luck, it’ll barely avoid the $100 million losers club (after a $144 million opening weekend). It should be over/under $500 million worldwide by tomorrow.

How bad is this? Well, Marvel mid-July openers tend to crash in their second weekends. Ant-Man and the Wasp, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Black Widow all took drops between 61% and 67% in their second Fri-Sun frames, but the first two recovered and earned around 1.6x their respective ten-day totals. Black Widow did not recover and only made 1.4x its ten-day total, as did the much disliked Eternals last November. However, and this is a big “however,” even 1.35 x $233 million gets Thor: Love and Thunder to $315 million, essentially tying with Thor: Ragnarok in 2017. Almost nothing beyond Warner Bros.’ animated DC League of Super-Pets on July 29 qualifies as multi-quadrant family fun between now and WB’s Black Adam on October 21. 1.55 x $233 million still equals $360 million.

Even amid mixed reviews and word-of-mouth, we’ll have to wait another week to see if Thor: Love and Thunder is playing like a standard midsummer MCU title. Thor 4 could be Taiki Waititi’s Batman & Robin, in terms of “saving” the franchise with a lighter, more comic entry, only to go way too far even with general moviegoers with the follow-up. Or, it could be a relatively “It’s fine, whatever” well-received MCU sequel that will only do marginally better than Thor 3 because they can’t all be Spider-Man: No Way Home. As for the Disney+ factor, I’m very concerned that it’ll impact the next month’s worth of theatrical legs, but that’s a self-inflicted problem and didn’t seem to hurt Doctor Strange 2 (which earned $34 million after the Disney+ release date was announced).