Marvel’s ‘Thunderbolts’ opens the summer movie season with a solid $76 million box office debut

Marvel Studios’ “Thunderbolts" opened with $76 million in domestic ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday, kicking off the summer box office with a solid No. 1 debut that fell shy of Marvel’s more spectacular launches.

All eyes had been on whether “Thunderbolts” — a team-up of antihero rejects similar to “Avengers” – could restore the Walt Disney Co. superhero factory to the kind of box office performance the studio once enjoyed so regularly. The results – similar to the...