Weekend Box Office: Thunderbolts* makes a solid entrance, while Sinners establishes itself as the surprise of the season

People are coming back to the cinema. Yes, maybe not as much as a few years ago, but after a few months of real crisis for cinemas around the world, it seems that recent productions are encouraging audiences to pay for the cinematic experience again. This weekend they proved it again, both in the support for the new entry and in the good hold of last month's release, according to Variety's data.

Thunderbolts* opened last Friday and early figures indicate that it has surpassed $162 million in its first weekend. That's not quite the $192 million that this year's previous MCU release (Captain America: Brave New World, with $192 million in total) made, but it does make for positive reading, given the rave reviews for the new Florence Pugh-led production with the Marvel Universe's second-string team.

The other headline-grabber of the weekend was the sustained momentum of Sinners, the horror thriller starring (twice) Michael B. Jordan. The vampire film has been a real success in the United States, where it has been close to 180 million dollars at the domestic box office. This, added to the takings in the rest of the territories, has pushed the film up to the current $236.6 million, and many analysts already see the film as sure to exceed $250 million in the next few days.

"2025 is following the same pattern we saw last year: A weak first quarter, then the box office woke up in April - this year 'Minecraft' and 'Sinners' did the waking up," says David A. Gross, who heads film consultancy Franchise Entertainment Research. "The summer calendar is loaded with mainstream titles with broad appeal."

We'll have to see how future releases such as Ballerina, How to Train Your Dragon, Elio, F1 and 28 Years Later fare to see if this positive trend holds up and keeps audiences coming back to the theatres.