Box Office: Marvel’s ‘Eternals’ Nabs Promising $9.5 Million Thursday

Chloé Zhao’s Eternals earned $9.5 million in Thursday previews last night, scoring the third-biggest preview gross of the “pandemic-era” behind Venom: Let There Be Carnage ($11.6 million) and Black Widow ($13.2 million). That is a hair better than the $8.8 million earned by Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and safely above the $6.3 million earned by No Time to Die and the $7.1 million grossed by F9. It’s also, in terms of non-Covid comparisons, on par with the $9.4 million earned by Doctor Strange on this same early-November weekend in 2016.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sorcerer Supreme origin story earned $85 million over its Fri-Sun weekend, a Thursday-to-weekend comparison which would give Eternals, starring (among others) Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie, an $86 million domestic launch. That would be above the $80.3 million opening of Black Widow (which frontloaded after a $39 million Friday partially thanks to Disney+ Premier Access availability) and the $75 million Fri-Sun opening weekend (from a $94 million Fri-Mon Labor Day launch) of Shang-Chi. It would rank below Venom: Let There Be Carnage’s $90 million launch as the second-best opening since late 2019.

Considering the comparatively lousy reviews (49% rotten with a 5.6/10 average critic score from Rotten Tomatoes) which argue that the film isn’t all that enjoyable or exciting beyond “Hey, these strangers have superpowers,” I wouldn’t be shocked to see a more frontloaded weekend. A Thursday-to-weekend split like Thor: Ragnorak ($14.5 million/$123 million on this weekend in 2017) gives Eternals a $80 million debut frame. However, Thursday-to-weekend legs like Ant-Man and the Wasp ($11.5 million/$76 million), Captain America: Civil War ($25 million/$179 million), Avengers: Age of Ultron ($28 million/$191 million) and Black Widow ($13.2 million/$80 million) would give the ensemble melodrama a $57-$67 million debut.

I don’t think it’s going to play like a Twilight sequel (which earned around 20% of their over/under $140 million debuts via Thursday previews), but that would be $48 million. Again, that’s mostly fun with math, as the MCU brand is strong and trusted enough to survive reviews right between the likes of X-Men: Apocalypse, Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Man of Steel, at least for opening weekend. After that, well, it’ll depend on whether audiences are as disappointed with the ambitious epic as are critics, and whether that impacts post-debut legs. Considering Disney’s robust legs for most of their big 2021 releases, and the popularity of the MCU brand over the last few years, I wouldn’t bet against anything beyond over/under “business as usual.”

Sure, it could open with closer to Thor ($65 million) than Thor: The Dark World ($85 million) and earn legs closer to Captain America: Civil War ($409 million/$179 million) than Ant-Man ($181 million/$58 million). But Top Gun: Maverick vacating leaves only Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Disney’s own Encanto as four-quadrant competition between now and the mid-December surge (West Side Story, Sing 2, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Matrix: Resurrections). Eternals will provide a definitive test of how high Marvel can soar when the characters are glorified strangers and the reviews are warning folks to stay away.