Weekend Box Office: 'The Avengers' assemble to earn $200.3 million!

[The Clown Prince]

The summer movie season kicked off with it’s best start EVER! Knowing that The Avengers was going to do well it’s opening weekend wasn’t a question of is it, but rather how successful will it be and how much money will it make? Opening in 4,349 locations, the answer is that not only did it far exceed what anyone thought, but it went right ahead and shattered the all-time opening weekend record with a $200.3 million opening distancing itself from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 opening weekend of $169.1 million! With a reported budget of $220 million, in North America alone it’s just about made it’s budget back. Overseas, The Avengers has done very well racking up additional numbers of $441.5 million and totaling a worldwide take of $641.8 million after today! Disney/Marvel's very heavy, aggressive, and likely expensive marketing and advertising campaign helped to get the word out and create heavy excitment and hype for the film that was years in the making and had five films leading up to it.

Going back to Friday, The Avengers debuted with midnight opening numbers of $18.7 million. Not enough to best some of the Twilight films, Harry Potter films or even The Hunger Games. But it was enough to become the highest midnight opening for a superhero film just squeaking by The Dark Knight ($18.5 million). Following it's midnight debut The Avengers made an additional $61.8 million Friday day. That combines for an all day opening number of $80.5 million. Not the all-time Friday record or opening day record as that still belongs to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 which scored $91.1 million. However Saturday and Sunday is where The Avengers made it's most of it's money.

Critically The Avengers has done very well earning a RottenTomatoes score of 94%. 217 Fresh, 15 Rotten.

The Avengers is well on it’s way to setting a number of records in the days ahead such as “fastest to…” which it already did with $100 million and $200 million and likely to $250 million and possibly $300 million. The Dark Knight used to own the fastest to $100 million, and $200 million, and it owns the "fastest to" records of $250 million ( 8 days), $300 million (10 days), $350 million (14 days), $400 million (18 days), and $450 million (27 days). Avatar has the fastest to $500 million (32 days). The Dark Knight was a summer release in July and with no school, theaters were packed with people not having classes. Being that this is still early May and school is still in session, the "fastest to" records might still be held by The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight’s total gross is $533 million and is the highest grossing superhero film.

Believe it or not there were other movies still playing in cinemas this weekend. Last weekends two week champ Think Like A Man dropped one spot to second place with $8 million and a $73 million total.

The Hunger Games came in third with $5.7 million and a $380 million total. The Hunger Games is the movie to beat so far this year for total gross. The Avengers is well on it’s way to eventually catching it, and quite possibly leave it far behind.

In fourth place was The Lucky One with $5.5 million and a $47.9 million total.

And rounding out the top 5 is The Pirates! Band of Misfits with $5.4 million and a $18.5 million total.

Out of the top 12 this weekend is 21 Jump Street (13^th), and American Reunion (14^th).
　
Opening next weekend is only one new movie as we enter week 2 of the summer season and that movie is Dark Shadows (rated PG-13). Directed by Tim Burton it stars Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Eva Green, Chloë Grace Moretz, Bella Heathcote, and Gully McGrath.
Here are your numbers….


1) The Avengers- $200,300,000 ($200,300,000) NEW!
2) Think Like A Man- $8,000,000 ($73,029,000)
3) The Hunger Games- $5,700,000 ($380,727,000)
4) The Lucky One- $5,510,000 ($47,917,000)
5) The Pirates! Band of Misfits- $5,400,000 ($18,563,000)
6) The Five Year Engagement- $5,100,000 ($19,200,000)
7) The Raven- $2,508,000 ($12,047,000)
8) Safe- $2,470,000 ($12,874,000)
9) Chimpanzee- $2,395,000 ($23,012,000)
10) The Three Stooges- $1,800,000 ($39,637,000)
11) The Cabin in the Woods- $1,550,000 ($38,004,000)
12) John Carter- $1,325,000 ($70,591,000)

[Wonderwall]

$200 Million dollars?..as Lobo would say that's a whole lot of mai tai.

[Tommy Lawson]

And thus, there is now no doubt whatsoever that Disney received a great deal for Marvel in 2009 when they purchased Marvel for $4 billion. This movie alone is going to pay off, not just now from box office revenue now, but from merchandising, home video releases, etc. for many years into the future. The Dark Knight Rises, IMO, will definitely have to rise up to the challenge in July to both top $200 million in a single weekend, and also outpace The Avengers' opening. Opening in July should help The Dark Knight Rises though.

[GatorMan92]

I can't wait to see what The Avengers's final gross is gonna be when its run in theaters ends. So, how long do some of you think it'll stay at the top?

[Spideyzilla]

I can't wait to see what The Avengers's final gross is gonna be when its run in theaters ends. So, how long do some of you think it'll stay at the top?

Next week for sure. The week after it'll have tough competition with The Dictator and Battleship, so it's tough to say.

[Dudley]

Wow. That's the best opening ever.
Glad I didn't see it this weekend, theaters would have been jam packed.
Besides, can't beat those $5 matinee prices!

[Peter Paltridge]

And thus, there is now no doubt whatsoever that Disney received a great deal for Marvel in 2009 when they purchased Marvel for $4 billion. This movie alone is going to pay off, not just now from box office revenue now, but from merchandising, home video releases, etc. for many years into the future. The Dark Knight Rises, IMO, will definitely have to rise up to the challenge in July to both top $200 million in a single weekend, and also outpace The Avengers' opening. Opening in July should help The Dark Knight Rises though.

But....they don't own this movie....

Are they getting royalties then?

[Dr.Pepper]

Wow. Of course I knew it was going to be big, I just didn't think The Avengers was going to be breaking any records. Again, wow.

[MarineCorps]

But....they don't own this movie....

Are they getting royalties then?

Disney owns Marvel, who made this movie

[Gold Guy]

Thats awesome news! The Avengers was awesome, just plain awesome! I'm happy for it.

[mumbo]

Wow, I thought The Avengers would get the opening weekend record, but I didn't think it would hit $200 million. Bravo!

There's already a worthy challenger to the throne coming in two months in the form of The Dark Knight Rises, so stay tuned...!

[CyclonatorZ]

But....they don't own this movie....

Are they getting royalties then?

The whole "Paramount pretending it made the Avengers" thing is just an odd legal agreement that Disney made in order to to secure the rights for future Marvel Movieverse releases. This Variety article explains the finer points of the deal:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118044282

[Scirel]

Next week for sure. The week after it'll have tough competition with The Dictator and Battleship, so it's tough to say.

You really think Battleship will compete with this? That's somehefty optimism.

Although, People actually did see transformers 3, and this coudl basically be called transformes 4 and you wouldn`t really be abel to tell.

[Lord Dalek]

But....they don't own this movie....

Despite the Paramount logo, Disney actually is the distributor of the movie in all regions. Says so at the end of movie.

[MrBabySpencer]

i was expecting for the avengers to have an awesome weekend but not this awesome, huh good thing i wasn't in the theaters it would have been jam packed

[The Clown Prince]

Actual numbers came out today and The Avengers made even more than originally estimated! It's final 3-day tally came in at $207,438,708! It's worldwide total has now climbed to $654.8 million after only a week in release worldwide.

For anyone wondering how it did in IMAX....

From Comingsoon.net

"The Avengers" has also surpassed IMAX's domestic opening weekend box office record by generating $15.3 million of the film's record-setting domestic gross, resulting in an IMAX per-screen average of approximately $56,000 in 275 digital IMAX® theaters. Internationally, the film generated approximately $6.1 million over the weekend in 176 IMAX theaters, of which 80 were debut runs. This brings IMAX's international total to $16 million. The film also set a new IMAX three-day opening weekend global box office record with $21.4 million, bringing the worldwide gross to $31.3 million in IMAX theatres worldwide since its global release on April 25.

Personally I can't wait to see where the final numbers land when it's theater run is over with. It's first regular business/school week starts today and we'll see what kind of numbers it brings in this week.

[The Clown Prince]

Monday's box office numbers are out and The A​vengers earned another $18,898,999 for a new record setting 4-day total of $226,337,707! Worldwide it's total has now climbed to $702.2 million!

[The Clown Prince]

Tuesday numbers are out and once again strong numbers for The Avengers. It made another $17,677,190 which brought it's total up to $244,014,897!

[King_of_doom]

Tuesday numbers are out and once again strong numbers for The Avengers. It made another $17,677,190 which brought it's total up to $244,014,897!

Wow it's really getting strong each day, you wonder if Dark Shadows will stand a chance.

[BigFatHairyDeal]

I'm glad to see the movie did well, as I really enjoyed it, but the prices of movie tickets has risen so rapidly that the market is built for these weekend records to fall every other year. We already pay $2 more per ticket than we did 10 years ago, and the price for 2011 was up to $7.93.

That said, congrats to the movie makers and marketers. I'm fairly confident I can say "Mission accomplished."