Mickey 17 has dethroned Captain America: Brave New World in spite of its lukewarm debut. The newest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie debuted at No. 1 over Presidents’ Day weekend and maintained that position for three consecutive weekends at the domestic box office, batting away competing new releases including Paddington in Peru, The Monkey, and Last Breath. Its latest contender is the Mickey 17 release. The Robert Pattinson sci-fi movie, in which he plays multiple clones who are used as expendable test subjects, is the first feature from director Bong Joon Ho since his 2019 Best Picture winner Parasite.
Per Variety, as of Saturday morning, Mickey 17 is projected to take in a 3-day opening weekend total of roughly $18 million at the domestic box office. This hardly makes a dent in its reported $118 million budget, which likely means that it will need to $295 million or more worldwide in order to break even. However, this is more than enough for it to topple Captain America: Brave New World from the No. 1 position. The Marvel movie has now sunk to No. 2 for the first time, ahead of weekend 2 of Last Breath.
What This Means For Mickey 17
There Is Some Triumph Mixed With Its Disappointing Debut
In spite of falling far short of its budget, the domestic opening for Mickey 17 is still the third-best of 2025 so far, falling behind the $88.8 million debut of Captain America: Brave New World and the $36 million bow of Dog Man, but coming in slightly ahead of Den of Thieves: Pantera‘s $15 million. While the Bong Joon Ho movie is technically not original because it is based on Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey 7, this still marks the best debut for a non-franchise movie of the year, as Dog Man is a spinoff from DreamWorks’ 2017 movie Captain Underpants.
Captain America: Brave New World has had the best debut of the year so far, but it is still tracking poorly compared to previous MCU movies and remains the 32nd highest-grossing movie of the 35-film franchise worldwide at the time of writing.
However, its comparative success does not mitigate the huge risk taken on by the movie’s budget. Although Parasite was an Oscar-winning critical and commercial smash, it only grossed $262.6 million worldwide, which still wouldn’t have been enough to hit the new movie’s estimated break-even point. While Mickey 17 reviews have been kind, earning it a Certified Fresh score of 79% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes alongside a 75% audience score, these scores are nowhere near Parasite‘s scores of 99% and 95% respectively, which could spell bad news for the Robert Pattinson movie’s potential as a similar word-of-mouth success.
Our Take On The Weekend Box Office
March Could Continue To Disappoint
After 2025 opened with a roster of movies that weren’t runaway hits but were collectively turning out strong grosses, March has so far failed to live up to that promise. Given the similarly lukewarm projections for the upcoming live-action Snow White remake, which is the biggest remaining release of March, it ultimately seems unlikely that Captain America: Brave New World and Mickey 17 will find strong compeтιтion for even their modest grosses until either A Minecraft Movie debuts in April or May delivers the tentpoles Thunderbolts*, Lilo & Sтιтch, and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
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Source: Variety
