Box office: Captain America is the year's first (North American) blockbuster, but opens at the low end for an MCU sequel

Also: Paddington in Peru improves slightly on the last Paddington flick, Heart Eyes gets a big Valentine's Day boost, and an animated Chinese mega-hit cracks the top five.

Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), the superhero known as the Falcon, takes the title role in Captain America: Brave New World.

A few of this week’s highlights:

• Captain America: Brave New World had the best opening by far of any film since November, but also one of the weaker openings in the MCU franchise.

• Paddington in Peru had a slightly better opening than the last Paddington sequel.

• Heart Eyes, a hybrid romcom-slasher flick, got a big Valentine’s Day boost.

• Ne Zha 2 cracked the top five and instantly became the highest-grossing Chinese film in North America in over 20 years.

  • The film, a sequel to 2019’s animated hit Ne Zha, has also grossed $1.6 billion internationally since opening in China almost three weeks ago—which makes it the first movie ever to gross a billion dollars in one country, and the 11th-highest-grossing movie ever worldwide.

• Sonic the Hedgehog 3 inched past 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand to become the top-grossing James Marsden film in North America (in unadjusted dollars).

And now, a few more stats and facts re: this week’s top ten, title by title: