Much like the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score, which has now dropped to 47%, the box office projections for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Eternals had been constantly spiraling downwards.
The cosmic comic book adaptation was once pegged for an opening weekend of at least $100 million, which was revised down to $75 million, before lower than expected Friday numbers had many analysts wondering if the film would even be able to crack the $70 million barrier.
As it turns out, it did, with Variety reporting that Eternals nabbed an estimated $71 million across the three-day frame. That makes it the fourth highest-grossing debutant of the pandemic era behind Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, meaning that all four of the year’s top-grossing weekends belong to Marvel.
You could make the argument that Eternals may well have soared much higher had the critical consensus been more enthusiastic, but the drawing power and audience goodwill built up by the MCU since the summer of 2008 means that anything bearing the franchise’s branding is destined for success, whether it gets panned or praised. Based on the social media reactions, audiences don’t seem to have much of a problem with the intergalactic actioner at all.