Weekend predictions: Thunderbolts* set for great* opening weekend

Thunderbolts* stacked up $11.5 million in preview grosses yesterday, and is set to post one of the biggest weekends of 2025. That’s objectively great news, coming off a fantastic April for the industry, courtesy of A Minecraft Movie and Sinners. The only asterisk against the performance of Thunderbolts is that it will post another sub-$100-million opening for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Here’s our baseline prediction for Thunderbolts*…

The strength of the MCU is such that our model has virtually no choice but to predict an opening around $100 million. Yes, The Marvels was a bust, and new entries in the franchise have made less than $100 million on opening weekend consistently over the past few years. But the openings for Eternals, Shang-Chi and Black Widow were substantially affected by market conditions. Adjusting for that, all three of those films made the equivalent of over $100 million when adjusting for market strength.

The model thinks the market is fairly weak right now (although much stronger than it was a month ago), but audience interest in Thunderbolts* has been sufficient to keep $100 million as a possibility going into the final week before its release.

The industry consensus has been that $100 million is out of reach, and Thursday’s preview numbers pretty much confirm that…

MCU movies have had Thursday-to-weekend multipliers between 6 and 8.5 coming off previews in this range. That points to a weekend between about $70 million and $90 million. Our final weekend prediction lies basically in the middle of that range.

Also opening this weekend, but not reporting Thursday previews, is Nicolas Cage thriller The Surfer. The model wasn’t hugely excited by this one, but we’re seeing decent audience buzz…

In my opinion, the model is probably over-adjusting for measured audience interest in this case, and the weekend will come in lower than this. We’ll see.

Here’s what the model thinks the top 10 will look like.

Fundamentally, we’re headed for another strong weekend. The continued strength of Sinners and A Minecraft Movie will be worth looking out for. With no serious competition next weekend, both still have a window to boost their theatrical earnings.

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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com