Black Widow Tracking For Big Opening Weekend Despite Coronavirus

The continued spread of the Coronavirus looks set to have a big impact on the movie business, with the Chinese box office virtually brought to a standstill in recent weeks and reports indicating that billions could be lost. Hollywood has already started reacting, too, with Disney delaying the release of Mulan in China, while the latest Bond flick No Time to Die has been pushed back by a full seven months.

However, there’s still a great deal of uncertainty surrounding how the virus will ultimately end up affecting people’s ability and desire to head out to the theater, with the industry no doubt crossing their fingers in the hope that the worst will be over by the time it reaches the lucrative summer season.

As the biggest brand in the industry, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is virtually bulletproof at the box office, but Black Widow has a lot more pressure riding on it than some recent solo movies hailing form the MCU. For one, it marks the official launch of the franchise’s post-Endgame Phase Four, and also finally gives Scarlett Johansson’s title character the solo movie that fans have been demanding for a decade.

Obviously, there’s no chance of it turning out to be the studio’s first bomb, but there’s still plenty of question marks surrounding Black Widow’s ability to conquer the box office in a similar fashion to the studio’s other heroes. Still, some new reports indicate that the movie is tracking for a domestic opening weekend that could go as high as $130 million, which would put it among the MCU’s ten biggest-ever debuts.

To put things into perspective, apart from the two Ant-Man flicks, none of the studio’s projects have opened to less than $85 million since Phase One, which is the bare minimum that Black Widow should be aiming for. However, out of the thirteen MCU movies that made at least $100 million over their first three days, nine of them featured Iron Man, which bodes well for financial success given Tony Stark’s reported cameo.

The lower end of projections comes in at around $90 million based on early projections, but with Black Widow still two months away from release and the Coronavirus still dominating headlines around the globe, the numbers could skew massively either way for Natasha Romanoff’s first and final standalone adventure depending on what happens between now and then.