Eternals falls short of other Marvel movies at the box office

Usually the box office news around a major movie release is binary: Hit or a flop. But in the case of Marvel’s latest release Eternals, its success is harder to gauge.

In its opening weekend, Eternals managed to take in $71 million, a little short of projections that had the movie potentially cracking the $80 million mark. That puts it behind Black Widow, which took in $80 million, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,  which took $75 million. Incredibly Venom: Let There be Carnage has the best 2021 opening box office weekend for a Marvel creation (even though the movie was made by Sony) at $90 million.

Regardless of expectations, Eternals still pulled in the fourth strongest box office weekend of the year.

But the Chloé Zhao directed Eternals received a fairly muted critical response — it’s sitting at 53 on Metacritic. Many believe this could lead to a significant drop off as word of mouth spreads. The movie ended up taking $90 million in overseas markets in Europe, Australia and South Korea, which is a strong result. International markets could potentially be big for Eternals.

Eternals does debut a new host of characters to the cinematic audience, which may account for the slight drop off. It represented something of a risk for Marvel, not just in terms of the property, but in style and aesthetic. Personally, I’d like to see more of those risks from Marvel, so hopefully this doesn’t dissuade them.