A big Thursday night ($11.5) pushed Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*” through a robust Friday, which Disney says added $20 million to that for a $31.5 million “opening day,” with Saturday and Sunday adding up to a $76 million opening weekend.

As that’s well below the desultory “Captain America: Brave New World,” which opened to $88 million in a cinematically slow Feb., Marvel appears to be facing a BO landscape of permanently-reduced expectations, post “Deadpool & Wolverine.”

It’s not “The Marvels” ($46 in 2023), but $76 puts it in the lower-third of Marvel opening weekends, in “Ant Man” sequel, “Eternals” and “Shang-Chi” territory.

Unproven characters, not a “box office” star in the lot, an unknown and a “Seinfeld” holdover as villains, thin character development but with a generational despair connection that may resonate with Gen Z, Marvel will call this is “win” even though, by May/Marvel standards, this isn’t all that.

It’s critic proof, but reviews overall have been approving if not enthusiastic.

The more ambitious “Sinners” is proving to be the box office phenomenon of the spring, and should hang around into summer. Adding another $33 this weekend shows Ryan Coogler’s got his finger on the ticket-buying public’s pulse. Racism taking on a vampiric edge is what the people want. Apparently.

“Minecraft” proves the value of a beloved video game as movie fodder, riding through bad reviews to another $13.7 million this weekend. As dumb as that comical beast is, you’d better believe every studio is going to school on how to pander your way to black ink with a video game property.

The more conventionally entertaining “The Accountant 2” is also proving to have legs, with a $9.5 million weekend (50%+ falloff from its opening).

“Until Dawn” is the only “other” horror title in theaters (after “Sinners”) to move the BO needle, adding another $3 million. It, too, is based on a video game. And it’s further proof that “Sinners” is the horror exception to the rule. That audience has shrunk, not producing the numbers it did as recently as a year and a half ago.

As that audience skews younger, it may very well be that “the kids aren’t going OUT to the movies any more,” as some doomsayers are claiming.

The animated “King of Kings” is still in the top ten and has cleared the $57 million mark since opening.

Overall, however, this is a decent weekend for ticket sales, chasing away memories of a comatose spring and most of the titles that led to it.