Aquaman may have dominated the box office in recent months, but right now, the superhero of the moment is Captain Marvel, and with Brie Larson having now made her big screen debut as Carol Danvers, it seems that the MCU has another bonafide hit under its belt.
Box office projections were always strong for the pic, even despite what’s been a pretty controversial couple of months for Captain Marvel. Between trolls trying to lower its Rotten Tomatoes score and public figures slamming the movie for a number of reasons, the buzz around the franchise’s latest effort wasn’t always so positive, but it seems that Larson and co. have prevailed, soaring right to the top of the charts this weekend with a huge opening.
Domestically, Captain Marvel earned a whopping $153 million, while overseas it brought in an additional $302 million. That puts its worldwide total at $455 million, making this a very, very successful debut for Ms. Danvers. Suffice it to say, Kevin Feige and co. must be pretty happy right about now.
In comparison to previous MCU films, Captain Marvel‘s domestic figure places the Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck-directed movie ahead of such heavy hitters like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 to clinch the seventh highest-opening weekend in the 21-installment franchise. Not only that, but the Brie Larson-led pic also scored the highest-opening weekend at the domestic box office so far for 2019 and the third highest-opening ever for March.
Thanks to these numbers, the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole has now been pushed to a whopping $17.98 billon at the box office across its 21 films and should hit the $18 billion mark well before Avengers: Endgame arrives and adds at least another $2 billion to that total. In other words, Captain Marvel shows that the MCU is in no danger of superhero fatigue and we readily expect Carol Danvers to become the new face of the franchise as we head into Phase 4.