Captain Marvel 2 (The Marvels) Comes Out Friday. What Do the Predictions for the Movie's Opening Weekend Look Like?

Boxoffice Pro's first long-range forecast for the opening weekend of Captain Marvel 2 had the film debuting to a $50-$75 million gross.

Now, as might have been expected given the erosion of their expectations for the film in the subsequent weeks, with the weekend upon us, the high end of the range they project is below the low end of the range they announced a month ago--$35-$49 million.

Of course, as Boxoffice Pro published this figure as part of the weekend forecast, not a long-range forecast, they have not published a prediction for the film's overall run. However, they generally had in mind the movie making somewhere around two-and-a-half times its opening weekend gross (a typical figure for such movies until recently at least), which, when they still predicted a $45-$62 million opener, worked out to an estimate of $109-$156 million last week. Should we apply the same multiplier to the $35-$49 million opening weekend, then we would end up with the movie making somewhere in the range of $85 million and $125 million--in other words, plausibly falling short of the $100 million mark that even The Flash managed to breach, and making Ant-Man 3 look like a spectacular success by comparison.

Make no mistake--if this projection is accurate this is bad, for the movie, and for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to which it is so important. But is it accurate? Just a few days ago I attempted to chart out the most favorable scenario for which the film's backers could hope--that audiences actually like the movie, and good word of mouth gives it legs that partially redeem a weak opener, as happened to some extent with Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and as happened with that other Disney release Elemental especially. This could still happen--but to say it is likely would be another, different, thing, and it now seems a little less likely with the critics proving not at all kind to the movie. (Right now the Rotten Tomatoes score stands at 58 percent.) Of course, we have seen audiences prove much more favorable than critics to films this year that ended up performing above expectations--as with those video game-based hits The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Five Nights at Freddy's. (For the latter film the audience score is an approving 88 percent--against the appalling 29 percent score the critics gave it.) Still, The Marvels seemed to me unlikely to be that kind of critics-hate-it-but-viewers-love-it success (the more in as the critics have been so good to the MCU films over the years), leaving this movie that much longer and harder any road to success.