“Thunderbolts” touched down at the global box office with $162 million, including $86.1 million from 52 international markets.
Those ticket sales are behind the previous Marvel adventure, February’s “Captain America: Brave New World” ($192 million), though reviews and audience scores for “Thunderbolts” should help in terms of staying power. “Brave New World” on the other hand, hobbled by terrible word-of-mouth, quickly collapsed at the box office.
Big screen endurance is important because Disney spent $180 million to make and another $100 million to market “Thunderbolts,” which centers on a ragtag group of antiheroes including Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, Wyatt Russell’s John Walker and David Harbour’s Red Guardian.
“Thunderbolts” also topped domestic box office charts with $76 million. Outside of the U.S. and Canada, top territories were China ($10.4 million), the United Kingdom ($7.7 million), Mexico ($7.3 million) and Brazil ($4 million).
Elsewhere at the international box office, “Sinners” added $10.4 million from 71 markets, down just 27% from the prior weekend. Meanwhile R-rated vampire horror movie has become a sensation in North America with $179.9 million to date. After three weekends in theaters, “Sinners” is impressively nearing the $250 million globally with ticket sales currently at 236.7 million.
Also over the weekend, “A Minecraft Movie” collected $26.6 million overseas, boosting its foreign tally to $475.2 million. The PG video game adaptation, starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa, has grossed $873.4 million worldwide to stand as the year’s highest grossing Hollywood release to date.
“Thunderbolts” officially ignites the all-important summer movie season, with studios set to unveil new installments in some of the biggest franchises. After a weak start to the year, Hollywood is looking to upcoming blockbuster hopefuls like “Lilo & Stitch,” “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” and “Jurassic World Rebirth” hope to reinvigorate moviegoing.
“2025 is following the same pattern we saw last year: A weak first quarter, then the box office woke up in April — this year ‘Minecraft’ and ‘Sinners’ did the waking up,” says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “The summer calendar is loaded with broad-appeal, mainstream titles.”
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