In a follow up to my article from yesterday that reported that ‘The Avengers’ pulled $18.7 million at midnight showings, Deadline is now reporting that the highly anticipated superhero mash-up by Joss Whedon racked up an estimated $80.5 million on its opening day. This is only second to ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2’, which pulled in $91 million on it’s opening day. Additionally, Earth’s Mightiest heroes scored the 2nd biggest Friday opening of all time in box office history.
Together with the international gross of $334.3 million, ‘The Avengers’ is expected to pass the $575 million worldwide and $175 million domestically once the weekend is over. Like I said in my previous article, who cares if the first Marvel movie under the Disney banner didn’t break any midnight records? As you can see, it’s still bringing in all the money that everyone expected it to, and then some.
The summer movie season is certainly off to a good start. Now let’s see if other movies can bring in numbers anywhere near Marvel’s ‘The Avengers’.
What do you think, readers? Can ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ disassemble Marvel’s premiere super team? Can ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ crawl his way up the box office charts? Or will sci-fi pioneer Ridley Scott’s return to the genre with ‘Prometheus’ be enough to bench Nick Fury and company? If I had to take a guess, I’d say that ‘The Avengers’ will be the highest grossing film of the 2012 summer movie season. But I’m no good with anything related to money, as my mother will gladly tell you.