With talk of "Marvel fatigue" coming from the mouth of James Cameron last week, Marvel Studios proved that fatigue wasn't nearing and that excitement was at a record high for its film. Case in point, “Avengers: Infinity War” which now owns the best opening weekend of all time.
Weekend estimates have the 3-day-opening of ‘Infinity War’ at $250 million. Yikes. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” held the previous record ($247.96 million). I mean, there's a reason why people have said that "Infinity War" is a groundbreaking event, it really is, the film might have been given a mixed review by yours truly, but you can't deny the force of nature that is the film's popularity and how it took 11 years to finally arrive to it.
Its $39 million at Thursday night “previews” wasn’t a record, a Friday total of $106 million was the second-best single-day in box office history. However, Saturday's total of $83 million was what put it over the edge and beat previous Saturday record-holder “Jurassic World” ($69.6 million). Estimates for Sunday are at $61 million, the previous record is of $60.5 million (‘The Force Awakens’).
“Avengers: Infinity War” had a global $630 million weekend. That number defeated the previous record holder of $541.9 million set last year by “The Fate of the Furious.” And that's without even opening in two of the biggest overseas markets, China and Russia.
‘Infinity War’ looks like it has a shot at besting the numbers of this year's other Marvel juggernaut, “Black Panther,” but you can probably scratch it off surpassing "The Force Awakens" which currently sits at a $960M domestic box-office total.
“Black Panther,” in fact, had a major "Infinity War" boost this weekend as, on its 11th weekend, the film actually jumped from the #8 spot to #5, amassing a total of $4.4 million. Marvel Studios had 2 films in the Top 5. Never has a franchise been able to do that. ‘Panther’ now has a domestic total of $688 million.
1. Avengers: Infinity War — $250M (Debut)
2. A Quiet Place — $10.65M ($148M Overall)
3. I Feel Pretty — $8.1M ($29.6M)
4. Rampage — $7.1M ($77.9M)
5. Black Panther — $4.4M ($688M)
6. Super Troopers 2 — $3.6M ($22.1M)
7. Truth or Dare — $3.2M ($35.3M)
8. Blockers — $2.9M ($53.2M)
9. Ready Player One — $2.4M ($130M)
10. Traffik — $1.6M ($6.75M)