The Boxoffice Podium
Forecasting the Top 3 Movies at the Domestic Box Office | February 21 – 23, 2025
Week 8 | February 21 – 23, 2025
1. Captain America: Brave New World
Marvel Studios | Week 2
Weekend Range: $37M – $44M
Showtime Market Share: 26%
Pros
- After years as a high-flying understudy, Anthony Mackie took over the mantle of Captain America from Chris Evans in Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Brave New World. The results? An $89.8M 3-Day (up from initial $88.5M estimates) and $101M for the full 4-Day holiday weekend. That’s lower than previous MCU February bows Black Panther ($202M) as well as Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania ($106.1M), though enough to bolster the overall box office 50% above the same Valentine’s Day frame in 2024. We expect this title to carry the rest of February, even with less-than-stellar reactions.
Cons
- Two years ago in this same mid-February timeframe, the 2023 MCU entry Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania fell a whopping 70% from a $106.1M debut to $31.9M in its second weekend. This was due in part to poor word-of-mouth after it earned the lowest-ever Rotten Tomatoes critical rating for an MCU movie at 46% alongside a “B” CinemaScore. Sadly, Brave New World is not in a better position, with 49% critical on RT and an MCU-low “B-” CinemaScore that could spell a massive second frame dip for the fourth Cap film. It’s also not a great appetite whetter for Marvel’s 2025 team-up movies Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: First Steps… superhero fatigue is contagious.
- Our prediction panel is forecasting a smaller 50%-60% drop for the new entry by virtue of there being so little competition (The Monkey is not at all the same audience) and no other major studio tentpoles. Quantumania‘s second frame saw it going against a subversive Hard-R genre entry in Cocaine Bear, but it also had Jesus Revolution usurping its family audience. The positive spin is all the Ant-Man films consistently made less bank than other solo hero MCU movies, and Captain America is a stronger/more universal brand even with the role-swap of Evans-to-Mackie.
2. The Monkey
Neon | NEW
Weekend Range: $16M – $22M
Showtime Market Share: 13%
Pros
- Last summer boutique distributor Neon set out to make the Nicolas Cage serial killer thriller Longlegs its biggest movie ever…and succeeded. After a stellar $22.4M #2 opening in July, Longlegs ran the distance to $74.3M domestic and $125.3M WW. Now that film’s director Osgood Perkins is bringing his same off-kilter sensibility to the world of Stephen King with The Monkey, adapting the author’s 1980 short story with the help of producer James Wan (who knows from tiny evil dolls). Even though the new film is far more gruesome than Longlegs, it also has a blithe sense of gallows humor that may make it even more accessible to a wide audience that typically eschews the genre. Reviews are good (83% on RT), and Neon launching Monkey on 3000+ screens while also backing Perkins’ October release Keeper shows supreme confidence in the filmmaker. The red band trailer in October also generated huge awareness, surpassing 100 million views in its first 72 hours alone, plus the movie is Fandango’s best horror ticket pre-seller of 2025. If any movie can over-index this frame, The Monkey is it.
Cons
- Osgood Perkins could become the next household name of the horror genre, but The Monkey has to play to prove Longlegs wasn’t a fluke. The film’s violence has a detached, Looney Tunes cartoon sensibility to make it palatable, but the extremity of it all could still prove to be a turnoff for the normies. While February 2023’s Cocaine Bear is actually a good comp with its blend of outrageous comedy and gory violence ($23.2M debut, $64.67M domestic total), the elaborate death sequences evoke the Final Destination franchise. Those five entries chock full of elaborate Rube Goldberg-inspired bloodshed carry a median gross of $52.6M, with the biggest being 2009’s The Final Destination with $66.4M.
3. Paddington in Peru
Sony Pictures | Week 2
Weekend Range: $6M – $9M
Showtime Market Share: 10%
Pros
- Sony distributed StudioCanal’s threequel Paddington in Peru to a $12.76M 3-Day debut (down from initial $13M estimates) and $16M for the 4-Day. That’s barely better than the 2017 opening of Paddington 2 at $11M, although RT critical (93% certified fresh) and CinemaScore (“A) were on point. Sony has good reason to believe the movie could leg it out in the weeks before Disney’s Snow White becomes the tiny tot destination film.
Cons
- Even for a series known for underperforming in North America, Paddington in Peru‘s debut left a lot to be desired. After years of repeat watches on streaming plus terrific reviews, the Paddington brand should have bloomed stateside… but it clearly hasn’t. Our prediction panel is forecasting an under-50% drop for the second frame, but when you’re coming from a $12.76M 3-Day there’s nowhere to go but down. On top of that, dwindling performance in overseas markets after being out for months across the pond means at $131.8M the global total is likely never going to reach the first two, which both came in around the $250M range. For a series with this much critical enthusiasm and parental approval, it’s strange to see it flounder instead of growing. Perhaps the gentle nature of the character can’t compete with more in-your-face American children’s fare like Dog Man, Despicable Me 4, or The Garfield Movie. Even something as sweet as Inside Out 2 still carries a level of attitude and snark Paddington just can’t match.
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