Box Office Report: Paddington's Brave New World

Marvel’s back in town and the expectations were lower than ever. Captain America: Brave New World received some of the most damning reviews of any entry (and a paltry B- on CinemaScore) in the MCU and its endless cycle of reshoots had many worrying that the movie was doomed. for now, Marvel can breathe easy, as the movie earned $88.5 million over the three-day Valentine’s Day weekend. It was a movie for lovers. Worldwide, it’s at $192.4 million. Marvel claims its budget was around $180 million, a number I have suspicions about, but if they’re sticking to their guns on that one, then they’re at least breaking even before marketing costs come into it. I think this one will rely more on word-of-mouth than other earlier Marvel movies.

Movie-goers had another major option this Valentine’s Day in the form of Paddington in Peru, starring everyone’s favourite marmalade-loving South African. This film came out a couple of months ago in the UK because he’s our bear, dammit, and now it’s America’s turn. But it was a pretty soft opening against such big competition. It earned $13 million from 3,890 locations. More marmalade for us, then.

Ne Zha was a 2019 animated film from China that became the fifth highest-grossing film ever in its home country. For the sequel, Ne Zha 2, they’ve managed to earn about $1.63 million in only a couple of weeks. So, it really doesn’t matter how well it does in North America, but it is interesting to see it debut at number five with $7.2 million from 660 locations.

At 11 is Chhaava, a Hindi-language historical action film with $1.79 million from 497 theatres.

For Oscar geeks, the live-action short film nominees were bundled into a theatrical release and grossed $840,445 from 320 cinemas. Look, someone’s got to make guesses for those categories that aren’t based on pure luck or vibes.

This coming week sees the release of the horror film The Monkey, and action films Old Guy and Cleaner.

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office results here.