You can’t be the reliable golden boy in town if audiences don’t consider you an A-star franchise much more in post-COVID times.

So, yes, Captain America: Brave New World retained its shield (and anger) for weekend two but fell 68% with a $28.17 million weekend. True, it’s not as bad of a drop as recent fumbles like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Marvels, Morbius, and Joker: Folie a Deux, but it does share the cahoots with once-considered unmitigated disaster superhero features like Green Lantern, X-Men: Origins Wolverine, and Fantastic Four (2015) ten plus years ago.

With not a considerable amount of competition domestically (despite some overseas waters like Mickey 17 and Bridget Jones), it should end its domestic run around $190-220 million domestically and probably $425-450 million worldwide. That would be around 37-40% below The Winter Soldier and around 66% lower than Civil War (although, in all fairness, it marketed more as an Avengers 2.5). It’s still cumbersome to get reinvested, especially with a franchise that took innovation and daring risks for eleven years before cratering back to nostalgia and conventional. Middling reviews and weak word-of-mouth don’t help the fourquel’s case. Genuinely, the last MCU film that felt like a “Marvel can still deliver some stellar goods without relying on the past” is Shang-Chi (one could make a case for Wakanda Forever, but that was more of a sombering tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman than a riveting setpiece in isolation). Thunderbolts and the (fourth revival of) Fantastic Four need to show wit and tenacity, or Avengers: Doomsday could become a doomsday event of its own (no pun intended).

In other news, Neon’s The Monkey nabbed a very good $14 million in its debut weekend, making it the second-largest debut for the studio (behind Longlegs). A C+ from CinemaScore will be challenged with positive reviews for legs, so let’s see where the black comedy pans out. Paddington in Peru earned $6.5 million in its second weekend (-49% drop) and has passed $150 million worldwide. I’m guessing the fourth one will be on the way before we know it(?).

Dog Man earned $5.86 million in its fourth weekend and has passed $100 million worldwide. Ne Zha 2 is headed for the $2 billion benchmark, breaking all the records for China while slowing down a bit; it may pass Avatar: The Way of Water. Mufasa: The Lion King has passed $700 million worldwide by the end of this document, so Disney can relish in some good news if Brave New World can’t make the flight.

Next weekend sees the release of Last Breath, Riff Raff, My Dead Friend Zoe, and Cold Wallet.