Monday Morning Quarterback

By BOP Staff

May 10, 2016

Now what?

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Kim Hollis: Captain America: Civil War earned $179.1 million this weekend - twice as much as the previous Captain America film, though almost $10 million behind Avengers: Age of Ultron. It has also already earned almost $500 million internationally. What do you think of this result?

Jason Barney: I think we can put the term "superhero fatigue" on the shelf for a little while.

This opening just reminds everyone just how massive the Marvel Universe is as far as money making potential. I can't help do this analysis without tying it to Batman v Superman. I think discussing Captain America 3 in terms of the other Marvel films is fine, but we are talking about a class of their own. The Iron Man films, Captain America, Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy...look what they have accomplished. Then examine the DC Comics universe. Especially the recent body of work. There just isn't even ANY comparison. To make the point....Captain America: Civil War has made $670 million globally in about two weeks of release. Batman vs Superman doesn't even look like it is going to be able to limp to $900 million total. Ouch. I'm not going to go too far out on a limb with predictions for how far Captain America can go...but at this point, with this sort of buzz around this film, it is entirely possible it surpasses $1 billion globally by some time next week.

On its own this is a fantastic opening....$179 million is HUGE, especially when compared to the other Captain America films.




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Ben Gruchow: I will be forever sort of grouchy that the opening juuuust missed $186.1 million, which would let me unleash a torrent of cheeky references (like, maybe one or two) about the start of the Marvel Civil War vs. the start of the actual Civil War.

I'm nonplussed about this opening, in the best reflective way toward the movie itself; honestly, once a sequel exceeds its prior film's opening by a certain amount, numbers just don't mean much anymore. Would anyone be claiming disappointment if this had opened to $170 million instead of $180? What if it'd opened at $125 million? That'd still be a healthy growth over the opening of Winter Soldier. Instead, the $179 million it did open with gives us some fun trivia: it joins the short list of sequels that outgross the original film's entire domestic run within the confines of a three-day opening weekend, and it only slightly falls short even when adjusting for inflation. It nearly doubled the opening weekend of the last film in the series; offhand, I can't remember that kind of explosion happening for a $100+ million franchise since New Moon came out in 2009. And now there really is not even a shred of a reason to ever speak of New Moon again, so...bonus.

Disney's already had a brilliant year thus far with regard to quality product making ridiculous sums of money; Finding Dory is still waiting in the wings, and Doctor Strange and Rogue One aren't even really around the corner yet.


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