Captain Marvel, the latest superhero film from Disney’s Marvel franchise, is bringing home the bacon — to the tune of a $455 million box office total for the weekend.
The movie, Marvel’s first to be headlined exclusively by a female superhero, is off to the second largest global opening of any superhero movie behind Avengers: Infinity War and the sixth best global box officer premiere of all time.
The film’s success shows (again) that when under-represented demographics get their due in solid entertainment outings, audiences will respond by opening their wallets and shelling out the cash.
Marvel’s highest grossing movie to date for the U.S. box office is Black Panther, which raked in a whopping $700 million in movie theaters across North America.
Captain Marvel’s soaring numbers come despite mixed reviews from critics (like our own Anthony Ha) who called it “a fine but underwhelming debut for Brie Larson’s superhero.”
With the new release Marvel seems to also be consistently reducing the gender gap among audiences for superhero movies. Captain Marvel ranks alongside Black Panther and Ant-Man and the Wasp for having the smallest gender divide among audiences for films in the Marvel Comics Universe franchise, with a weekend crowd that was 55% male and 45% female, as Box Office Mojo reports.
The results also could mean good things for the Disney+ streaming service, which is counting on the Marvel and LucasFilm franchises to power subscriptions (take my money already).
Plans are in the works for a series starring Tom Hiddleston as Loki (the complicated villain/anti-hero from the Thor and Avengers movies) and Marvel executives have teased that characters from the now-defunct Netflix/Marvel deal for characters based on The Defenders team (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist — and tangentially The Punisher) may appear in some form in the Marvel Cinematic Universe down the road.
Captain Marvel, meanwhile is set to become the first movie to stream exclusively on the Disney+ service.
Source : Captain Marvel rakes in $455 million in worldwide weekend haul
