With the arrival of Captain Marvel in cinemas next month, Carol Danvers is expected to assume her place as the new face of the MCU, making it pretty appropriate that the movie’s home release will also serve as a new beginning of sorts.
For Marvel Studios features up to and including last year’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, the established practice was for the film to stream exclusively on Netflix after launching on Blu-Ray and DVD. But with Disney coming out with its own alternative to Netflix later this year, the company has announced plans for Captain Marvel to be the first of their films to release exclusively on Disney Plus.
It’s long been assumed that Disney intended to migrate their movies over from Netflix, though it wasn’t always clear that Carol’s solo debut would be the first to make the jump. Regardless, Captain Marvel will be in some interesting company over on Disney Plus, in that Marvel Studios is also working on an assortment of TV shows focusing on various MCU characters. Though the Loki miniseries looks like it might be the first to reach the platform, Disney also has plans for a Scarlet Witch and Vision show, as well as a Falcon and Winter Soldier series.
But before Captain Marvel comes to the platform, the film will first enjoy what’s expected to be a pretty impressive run in cinemas. One recent projection from Box Office Pro, for instance, predicted a domestic opening weekend gross of $160 million, placing the movie’s three-day haul ahead of the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Thor: Ragnarok. We’ll find out if Captain Marvel can live up to these expectations when the film hits theaters on March 8th, 2019.