WE-16 • PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE • 3/14/​24

As some­one who spends an in­or­di­nate amount of time on the web­site Box Of­fice Mojo, I find it slightly sur­real and vaguely an­noy­ing to watch ev­ery cul­ture war­rior with an in­ter­net con­nec­tion pro­nounce him­self an in­dus­try an­a­lyst and is­sue sweep­ing dec­la­ra­tions about the im­pact of a Twit­ter-verse con­tro­versy on a mas­sive block­buster’s bot­tom line.

I bring this up be­cause of “Cap­tain Marvel,” of course. Despite the fact that it is es­ti­mated to have grossed about $455 mil­lion around the world this week­end, $153 mil­lion of which came from the do­mes­tic box of­fice, I was con­fi­dently in­formed by a num­ber of peo­ple on Twit­ter that the movie was a dis­ap­point­ment.

I was told this is “ba­si­cally bomb­ing,” as far as a Marvel Cine­matic Universe of­fer­ing goes. Dis­ney and Marvel had in­cluded Thurs­day night pre­views to falsely in­flate the week­end to­tal, the film’s crit­ics in­sisted. Long-range pro­jec­tions had been as high as $180 mil­lion do­mes­tic, so a $160 mil-

lion open­ing (as the ini­tial Fri­day eve­ning es­ti­mates sug­gested) was bad, ac­tu­ally. Sun­day’s grosses were down quite a bit from Satur­day’s, show­ing weak­ness of word of mouth.

Each of these sup­posed data points is wrong. In or­der: This is the sev­enth-high­est MCU open­ing and, out­side of “Black Pan­ther,” the best for a stan­dal­one hero’s first film. Every movie re­leased these days in­cludes Thurs­day night pre­views in the first Fri­day’s box-of­fice grosses and has for years. Long-range track­ing is a ball­park fig­ure at best, and even then “Cap­tain Marvel” was right in the mid­dle of the $140 mil­lion to $180 mil­lion range sug­gested by Box Of­fice Pro. Sun­day is al­most al­ways the weak­est day on an open­ing week­end.

But peo­ple be­ing wrong on the in­ter­net is no great sur­prise. I asked CNN’s Frank Pal­lotta, who cov­ers this stuff for a liv­ing, what cau­tions he would of­fer am­a­teur an­a­lysts.

“Not ev­ery Marvel film needs to make the same amount of money to be a hit. If ‘Avengers: End­game’ is the big­gest open­ing in his­tory next month and makes roughly $100 mil­lion more in its open­ing week­end than ‘Cap­tain Marvel’ did, that doesn’t make ‘Cap­tain Marvel’ any less of a suc­cess,” Mr. Pal­lotta said in an email.

Cor­rect­ing all of these mis­con­cep­tions is

By Sonny Bunch 
 The Washington Post
From ‘Ghostbusters’ to ‘Captain Marvel,’ 
culture warriors get box-office results all wrong
Hopper Stone/SMPSP
From left: Patty Tolan (portrayed by Leslie Jones), Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy), Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) and Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) in the 2016 reboot of “Ghostbusters.”
SEE BOX OFFICE, PAGE WE-19