‘Avengers: Infinity War’ had the biggest opening of all time, raking in $250 million domestically, scooting past ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ $248M premier in 2015. It also landed the records for highest-grossing Friday and Saturday of all time. With its foreign gross of $380M, the Marvel mashup cleared a cool $630M and it won’t even open in China, the world’s second largest market, until May 1st. (It also hasn’t opened in Russia.) This global total is also a record for biggest opening ever, topping ‘The Fate of the Furious’. It was #1 in every region where it was released. It is also the biggest IMAX opening ever. With ‘Infinity War’, Disney passed the $1 billion mark for 2018, the fastest any studio has accumulated this amount, in just 117 days. This includes the grosses for ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ (which opened at the end of 2017) and ‘Black Panther’. Typically, the Marvel movies open overseas before the U.S., but Disney bumped its domestic release to match the rest of the globe. According to Disney worldwide distribution chief Dave Hollis, “The idea that domestic audiences would have to wait while this movie swept the balance of the world, we couldn’t do that to fans.”
Many AMC theaters stayed open 24 hours to play ‘Infinity War’ repeatedly to meet demand. Speaking of audiences, they gave the film an “A-” CinemaScore, while critics were overall positive, granting it an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes.
In an interesting case of the trickle-down effect, Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ prowled back into the Top Five! Granted, its weekend take wasn’t massive– $4.4M. Still, it appears that some fans wanted to revisit Wakanda before jumping into the melee of ‘Infinity War’. And as we know from the trailers, Black Panther and his followers play a major role in ‘Infinity War’. (Plus… ‘Black Panther’ is just excellent, so the more viewings the better!)
The gap between #1 and #2 is huge! While ‘Infinity War’ cleared $250M, the runner up, ‘A Quiet Place’ made $10.65M. The Amy Schumer comedy ‘I Feel Pretty’ is hanging in at #3, while ‘Rampage’ took #4.
Top Five:
- Avengers: Infinity War (Disney) – $250M
- A Quiet Place (Paramount) – $10.65M
- I Feel Pretty (STX Films) – $8.1M
- Rampage (New Line/Warner Brothers) – $7.1M
- Black Panther (Disney) – $4.4M
‘Infinity War’ isn’t likely to release its grip on #1 for a while, so most studios are giving it a wide berth. Next weekend will only welcome two new comedies, the remake of ‘Overboard’ starring Anna Faris and Charlize Theron’s ‘Tully’. There’s also the horror/thriller ‘Bad Samaritan’ starring David Tennant. The following weekend is also light.
In fact, there isn’t another potential blockbuster opening until May 18, when ‘Deadpool 2’ arrives. Normally, I’d predict that this movie would easily take #1, but if ‘Infinity War’ performs along the lines of ‘Black Panther’, it may even be able to block ‘Deadpool’.
Check back to see how things pan out next weekend!
Source: Deadline
