COVID forced a two-year break of Marvel Cinematic Universe entries, from “Spider-Man: Far From Home” on July 2, 2019 to “Black Widow” on July 9, 2021. By the time we hit July 8, 2022, Disney will have released SIX MCU movies in a 365-day period. Talk about making-up for lost time.
The Mouse House and Marvel have come close before. From May 5, 2017 to April 27, 2018, there were five films. Five films (four of the same) were released between July 7, 2017 and July 6, 2018.
But this time we have six, thanks to Taika Waititi’s “Thor: Love and Thunder”. After a long wait, Disney finally released a trailer for the fourth “Thor” installment featuring the returns of Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman, as well as the Guardians of the Galaxy.
We’ve got one more MCU film before #ThorFour: “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”, on May 6th. Though Benedict Cumerbatch’s Stephen Strange has played a pivotal role in several films, it’s been five and a half years since the first “Doctor Strange” in November 2016 — with 13 MCU movies in between.
“Doctor Strange” opened to $85.1 million. I have to imagine “Multiverse of Madness” will open much higher, especially considering the inflation in ticket prices over the past half-decade. Anything above that figure will be more than “Black Widow”, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Eternals” debuted to last year. But I don’t think “Multiverse” will reach the $260.1 million “Spider-Man: No Way Home” opened to in December. Maybe it will make a run at $200M. It all depends on how desperately fans want to see this right away.
As for “Thor”… the first one (from Paramount in May 2011) started with $65.7 million. November 2013’s “The Dark World” (from Disney) opened to $85.7 million. It’s been four and a half years since “Ragnarok” in November 2017, which began with $122.7 million. With a prime July position, this has the makings of a $150M+ open… again… depending on how many fans want to check this out during the first three and a half days.