‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ Expected to Lift Box Office to New Heights With $170 Million-Plus Opening
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With the July box office already running hot thanks to the $125 million three-day opening for Universal’s “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” Marvel Studios is set to kick it into even higher gear this weekend with “Thor: Love and Thunder” projections currently aiming at $150-$170 million.
Disney’s rival distributors, though, tell TheWrap they expect this blockbuster to open to even higher ticket sales, possibly around the $187 million launch of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” this past May.
However, prognosticators are not expecting the film to debut to $200 million — especially since no July release in box office history has ever reached that mark in its opening weekend given the usual glut of summer blockbusters. (Sony/Marvel’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” virtually had theaters all to itself last December when it opened to an astonishing 260 million.) The all-time box office opening record for July is $191.7 million set by the 2019 remake of “The Lion King,” followed by “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2” with $169.1 million in 2011.
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Still, expectations are high for Taika Waititi’s follow-up to “Thor: Ragnarok,” which opened to $122 million in 2017 and went on to gross $315 million domestic and $853.9 million worldwide.
Whether “Thor: Love and Thunder” sets records or merely delivers an excellent debut will come down to audience expectations. In the lead-up to “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” MCU fans were abuzz with theories about how the film would introduce the multiverse into the MCU, how it would continue the story of the hit Disney+ streaming series “WandaVision” and which surprise cameos may be in store.
“Love and Thunder” isn’t marketing itself on such surprises, instead selling itself simply as a fun midsummer romp with Thor — turned into one of Marvel’s more comedic figures by Waititi — and his newly superpowered ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (played by Natalie Portman). The critics’ consensus is that the film is an enjoyable if inessential Marvel installment, with a 70% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
As the strong performance of Universal’s “Jurassic World: Dominion” showed, being an enjoyable crowd-pleaser should be more than enough for “Thor 4” as nothing performs better during the summer than a franchise title that gives fans more of what they enjoyed before. Waititi’s overhaul of Thor in “Ragnarok” was popular with Marvel devotees, and positive reaction to the trailers released over the past few months show that there are millions eager for more of it.
The question will be whether the reception will be strong enough to drive “Love and Thunder” to $1 billion worldwide. “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness,” while still a big hit, fell just short of that mark with $953 million globally as weaker-than-expected audience response led to a 67% drop in its second weekend with no new release competition.
If “Love and Thunder” can post a stronger second weekend hold, $1 billion should be a reachable mark as there are no comparable blockbusters coming out for the remainder of the summer. While there will be other fare like Universal’s horror film “Nope,” Sony’s older-skewing action film “Bullet Train” and Warner Bros. family film “DC League of Super Pets,” there’s nothing like Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick” left on the rest of the slate, meaning “Thor” has all the runway it needs.
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