Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder is off to a solid start at the box office, having been released early in a handful of overseas territories ahead of its stateside debut on Friday. The fourth film in the Thor series picked up $15.7 million on its opening day from 17 International markets, including Germany, Italy, Australia and South Korea.
Love and Thunder will expand to the U.K, Brazil, India and Mexico on Thursday, and by the end of the weekend, it’ll be playing in 47 international markets, accounting for roughly 90% of its worldwide reach. The film isn’t playing in China, Russia and France. Overall ticket sales are pacing ahead of Thor: Ragnarok by 39% and 24% behind Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Love and Thunder’s biggest international territory on opening day was Korea ($3.1 million) followed by Australia ($3 million) and Indonesia ($1.6 million). Love and Thunder also added $1.4 million in Italy and $1.2 million in Germany. It’s raking in strong advance bookings in Latin American countries such as Mexico ($1.9 million) and Brazil ($1.4 million).
Domestically, the film is expected to make between $145 million and $155 million in its opening weekend, with the higher end of expectations touching the $170 million mark. By comparison, Ragnarok opened to $122 million in 2017, and contributed greatly to revamping the character’s image in the public’s consciousness. Since then, Thor has appeared prominently in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame — both films made a combined $4.8 billion worldwide.
Internationally, Love and Thunder is expected to pick up around $150 million in its opening weekend, pegging its estimated global debut at over $300 million. This puts the film in good shape to compete with some of the more recent installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.9 billion worldwide) and Doctor Strange 2 ($953 million worldwide, and counting). The character has certainly leveled-up from his first couple of appearances — the first Thor movie tapped out with $450 million worldwide, and Thor: The Dark World made a little less than $644 million worldwide. Ragnarok was by far the top-performing of the Thor films, both critically and commercially. It concluded its run with over $850 million globally.
But it also had what Love and Thunder seemingly doesn’t — a fresh take on the character complimented by enthusiastic critical reception. The fourth Thor film has received some of the most lukewarm reviews of any film in the MCU, which might impact its long-term performance. As we know, these films attract repeat audiences, which is an important contributing factor to the often astronomical figures that they tend to hit. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
