Captain Marvel Tracking For Heroic $100 Million Opening Weekend

The MCU’s next chapter in their sprawling, multi-billion dollar saga – Captain Marvel – is projected to score a $100 million domestic opening when it debuts this March.

That could be just the kind of boost Hollywood has been looking for; so far ticket sales are down 14.5% on last year, and there’s panic in the corporate sector of the business as the reality of the fact that exponential growth is physically impossible in a finite world begins to dawn on them. Still, with three weeks to go until Captain Marvel launches, positive word-of-mouth for Disney and Marvel Studios’ first female-led superhero film is putting the feature on course for an impressive opening, with some analysts even pushing the projected number up to the $120 million mark.

Those numbers would put the feature on the same benchmark as Warner Bros.’ and director Patty Jenkins’ 2017 rival feature Wonder Woman, which opened to the tune of $103 million domestic. That film ended its box office run with $412 million in North America, and $821 million worldwide.

Finishing in the low $800 million range internationally would be impressive for most studios, but solidly middle-of-the-road for Marvel – placing the feature tenth in their twenty-one picture franchise, behind Avengers: Infinity War ($2 billion), Avengers Assemble ($1.5 billion), Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1.4 billion), Black Panther ($1.3 billion), Iron Man 3 ($1.2 billion), Captain America: Civil War ($1.1 billion), Spider-Man: Homecoming ($880 million), Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 ($863 million), and Thor: Ragnarok ($854 million).

Captain Marvel has been directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who also penned the screenplay with Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Tomb Raider), Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy), and Meg LeFauve (Inside Out). The new film, based on the Marvel comic of the same name, follows former-Air Force pilot Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), who becomes a space-faring soldier caught between two warring, alien factions as she searches for clues to her forgotten past. Jude Law, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Gemma Chan, Clark Gregg, Lee Pace, Djimon Hounsou, and Annette Bening all co-star.

The film launches into UK cinemas on the 8th of March, and will be rated 12A.