There's no denying that "The Avengers" is a smash hit. Last weekend, it easily set the Opening Weekend Record, surpassing the reigning film, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2", by nearly $40MM. It was an amazing feat and something no on expected from the film - not in that capacity at least.
Throughout the week, while still incredibly strong, the film started to come back down to earth a little more. While opening weekend numbers were stronger than "The Dark Knight", daily week totals were much more in line with the film. So many expected that when this weekend rolled around, it would land somewhere right around where "The Dark Knight" fell, at $75.1MM ("Avatar" held the second-weekend record with $75.6MM).
Well, it looks like everyone underestimated this Superhero team again, as for the second weekend in a row, the film blew past all estimates and easily toppled the previous record of $75.6MM with an impressive (estimated) $103.1MM! It's hard to say what's the most impressive about these numbers right now, but the fact that a film was able to put up a 9-digit total in its second weekend - a figure that many thought would never be reached - is amazing. And it's also worth noting that the drop-off this weekend was only 50%, a figure you don't normally expect from films that gross as much as this one did as it did in its opening weekend.
Obviously, this has created for some pretty awesome stats for daily, domestic, foreign and worldwide totals. So hit the break to check out the full report on all of the films earnings! And I suppose we should talk about Tim Burton' latest, "Dark Shadows" too? If we have time maybe...
Okay, so as I said, "The Avengers" pulled in $103.1MM domestically this weekend, and the film now holds records for both of the first two weekends it's been in theaters. With the amounts it picked up throughout the week, it now stands at a total domestic gross of $373.1MM in just 10 days. That's now easily more than any of the previous single-character Avengers movies did in their entire theater run, including "Iron Man", the previous leader of the group ($318MM).
Last week, "The Avengers" became the fastest film to ever reach $200MM, beating "The Dark Knight" by two full days. That trend continued this weekend, as it actually appears that "The Avengers" is picking up some steam in this department. It had a few days of cushion on the $250MM mark, and it topped the mark easily, beating out "The Dark Knight" again by two days. And now that the film is up to $350MM, it also took the top spot as the fastest film to reach that mark, beating the previous record held by "The Dark Knight" by four days.
The films total domestic gross of $373.1MM ranks it 18th all-time on the domestic charts (unadjusted), and only $400,000 behind "Spider-Man 2". At this point, it's hard to project where this film will end up when this is all said and done, but it seems uneducated to think it will end up with any less than what "The Dark Knight" totaled ($533.3MM). I still don't believe this film has the legs to finish at the top with the big boys - "Avatar" ($760.5MM) and "Titanic" ($658.2MM), but who knows. We've all underestimated this film so far. Maybe it will yet again surprise us!
As for it's foreign totals, it's now passed (projected) $608MM. It's hard to find totals that show where that ranks all-time, but I can tell you that combined with its domestic totals, "The Avengers" has already crossed the $1 Billion mark, ahead of "The Dark Knight's" final worldwide total by $1MM. The film already sits in eleventh place on the all-time worldwide list, and should easily be sitting in the top six or seven BEFORE next weekend. Again, I don't think it can touch "Avatar" (2.78BB) or "Titanic" ($2.18BB), but has a very good chance to finish right behind.
It's funny, just a week ago, on the previous edition of the Slackers Selection CinemaCast, we discussed whether or not we thought this film could reach the $1BB mark. And now, only one week later, it has. It's been so strong worldwide, and shown little signs of slowing down. Now that its collected the $1BB that we wondered if it would ultimately be able to reach in only 10 days, where can this film go from here? Every day and week the film continues to amaze and surprise. It's putting up new records everywhere you look!
So now that that is settled, we only have to wait and see what the film will do next weekend. $60MM? It will have a bit more competition than it had this weekend, with another blockbuster in "Battleship". And while the film hasn't responded with critics nearly as well as "The Avengers" has, 46% compared to 93%, respectively, it's still a new huge-effects film that will surely put some butts in the seats.
And speaking of competition, I guess we should touch on the rest of the competition from this weekend. The only new wide-release this weekend was the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp film, "Dark Shadows". This film has not responded very well with critics, only a 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, but that didn't stop Depp and Burton fans from filling the auditoriums. Granted, those were probably about the only people who checked this film out this weekend, but it did put up a respectable, albeit not amazing, total of $28.8MM. This might not be what the studios were hoping for with this film, but with "The Avengers" as your competition it was really hard to expect much more. The film has a $150MM budget though, so in that regard, this doesn't look very good. We're only going to see more blockbuster films released over the coming weeks, so I really can't see this film doing much better than this. And this isn't the type of film that's going to play overseas very well either, so I'd imagine if they can break even it will be a huge success at this point.
Outside of that, everything else in to top 15 kind of blended together. "Girl in Progress" was the other new release this weekend, which debuted with $1.3MM in only 300 theaters. Also, "The Lucky One" passed $50MM in total gross with this weekend's collection, and "Chimpanzee" surpassed $25MM. Nice milestones for the films, but definitely nothing impressive for their single weekend grosses this week.
Check out all of the exact numbers below, courtesy of Box Office Mojo:
