It’s safe to say that Thor: Love and Thunder didn’t quite manage to capture our hearts in the same way that its predecessor Thor: Ragnarok did. While the latter was truly considered a return to form for everyone’s favorite God of Thunder, the former saw the Marvel sub-franchise backslide right back into those yucky Dark World waters.
It may well have flopped with critics and audiences, but as it turns out, it still ended up being a profitable release for Disney and Marvel. In short, the Big Mouse opened up its coffers to the tune of $547 million (which includes production, advertising, residuals, and other overheads), for the film to gross a little under $761 million in the global box office. This translates to Thor: Love and Thunder pulling a net profit of $103 million, according to data from Deadline.
Given that Taika Waititi re-set the bar with Ragnarok, expectations for Love and Thunder would have been quite high, as was punter confidence that the fourth Thor film would end up knocking it out of the park, which may explain the high ticket sales.
There seems to be something of a pattern forming with Disney and Marvel dropping the ball with their latest and greatest blockbusters, with February’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania also falling flat with both audiences and critics. Thankfully, the releases of Love and Thunder and the aforementioned Ant-Man film were split by the stellar-by-comparison Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
All eyes are now turned to next month’s Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 to see if James Gunn will be able to steer the MCU ship back on the right path before he bows out to go and focus on his gargantuan task of overseeing a revamped DC Universe.