Anyone Seeing Avengers 2 This Weekend

[key2win]

Going tonight for 7pm first showing. Cant wait. LOL!

[legionofboom]

No spoilers! I can't go until tomorrow night! haha

[key2win]

Movie was awesome. I read that Whedon had to cut about 40 minutes from the movie to get it down to what Disney wanted at 144 minutes. The uncut version will be released on Blu Ray and DVD.

[key2win]

Weekend Report: 'Ultron's Massive $188M Debut Falls Short of 'Avengers' Record - Box Office Mojo

Avengers: Age of Ultron ruled the box office this weekend with a huge $187.7 million, which is the second-biggest debut ever. Unfortunately, the top opening ever belongs to its predecessor, Marvel's The Avengers ($207.4 million).

The Avengers sequel also continues to do strong business overseas, where it's earned $439 million before even debuting in China or Japan.

Domestically, Ultron's $187.7 million debut accounted for 85 percent of the Top 12 box office this weekend, which is a new record ahead of Spider-Man 3's 83 percent. The movie earned a bit more than the first Avengers on Friday, but its $57.2 million Saturday was 18 percent lower. It was also a bit below Iron Man 3's $62.3 million.

There was a perception heading in to the weekend that the original movie's record was going to easily be topped. In hindsight, though, that was a very unfair assumption. In the years since the first movie's opening, no other title has opened anywhere close to $200 million. To make it that high required a perfect storm of factors, which Age of Ultron couldn't quite replicate.

The biggest of these, of course, was that the original Avengers was the first opportunity for moviegoers to see all of these famous superheroes share the screen. The sequel, by its very nature, could never be expected to replicate that experience.

It would be wrong to overstate the impact of reviews, but it's likely that they had a tiny impact as well. Heading in to opening, there was a sense that the first Avengers was a top-tier superhero movie; this time around, the word was much more muted.

Finally, the movie's Saturday number likely suffered due to a handful of sporting events that drew a lot of attention. The Kentucky Derby and Clippers v. Spurs Game 7 were widely-viewed events, though neither seemed to capture the zeitgeist in the way that the Manny Pacquiao vs Floyd Mayweather fight did. These probably weren't devastating—Avengers did still have the third-biggest Saturday ever—but they could definitely have shaved a few percentage points off of the weekend. When dealing with numbers this big, that could translate in to $5 to $10 million.

All of this is meant to explain the gap between the first and second movie, not to knock the second movie's performance. A $180-million-plus debut is an exceptional result any way you look at it, and it reinforces Marvel's utter dominance over the domestic box office (it currently holds the top three openings ever).

Avengers: Age of Ultron's audience was 59 percent male and 59 percent over the age of 25, and they awarded the movie a strong "A" CinemaScore (in comparison, the first Avengers received an "A+"). If Age of Ultron plays like the first Avengers, it will end its run with around $560 million. However, if it follows the same trajectory as Iron Man 3, it will close at $440 million. Either way, it will be one of the highest-grossing movies ever, but there's still a huge difference between those two numbers.

In its second weekend at the international box office, Avengers: Age of Ultron added $168 million for a new total of $439 million. According to Disney, it was off an average of 37 percent across its holdover markets.

In Mexico, it scored the biggest debut ever with $25.5 million. It had the second-highest opening Thailand ($7.4 million), and opened on par with the first movie in Spain ($6.2 million).

The next major market for Avengers is China, where it opens on May 12th. It's likely going to be a massive hit there; $200 million seems like a lock, with $300 million in play as well. It also has yet to open in Japan, where the first movie earned over $45 million.

[legionofboom]

This movie was very well done! A good mix of action and story.

[key2win]

Weekend Report - 'Ultron' Hot, 'Pursuit' Not - Box Office Mojo

Avengers: Age of Ultron didn't plummet from the sky like that Sokovian fiefdom in the film but, with its $77.2 million 2nd week outing, it did drop 59.6% from its opening take of $191 million. Surprising amounts of Monday-morning quarterbacking this last week noted that Ultron could have become the new #1 film for all-time weekend box office if it hadn't been up against several sporting events that siphoned off eyeballs.

Even still the Disney/Marvel property has a lot to celebrate. Domestically it easily dominated the box office at the #1 position with a per theater take of $18K in 4,276 venues. That $77.2M is still the 2nd highest 2nd weekend gross, just ahead of the 2nd weekend of Fox's Avatar ($75.6 million), and is topped only by it predecessor, Marvel's The Avengers ($103.1 million). Ultron's domestic take to date ($313M) has also already surpassed the lifetime domestic cumes of Captain America ($177M), Thor ($181M), Thor: The Dark World ($206M) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($259M).

Internationally Ultron is holding up impressively, hauling in $65M, crossing $562 million for an foreign cume, with a total worldwide take of $875.3M. It's also, as Disney will be quick to tell you, yet to open in Japan and the burgeoning behemoth that is China, which it does this coming Tuesday, further adding from foreign coffers.

The film did fall further than other, recent Marvel films. Iron Man 3's second week, in the same 2nd week frame in May 2013, fell 58.4%. But, to put things in further perspective that 59.6% is nowhere near the drop the previous #1 weekend-record slot took, a film not in the Marvel Universe, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. The finale to the wildly popular film series dropped a whopping 72% in its second weekend, going from an opening of $169 million to $47 million.

[key2win]

Avengers: Age of Ultron took its natural 3rd week 50% slide with $38.8M in estimated receipts and a worldwide cume that blew past $1 billion worldwide on Friday and now sits at $1.14B. The new domestic take, now at $372M, makes it the #1 film of 2015 (for now) as it passed Furious 7's $343M domestic cume. It also makes the Marvel film the 8th biggest grossing film of all-time. Ultron also opened up in China on Tuesday, grossing an estimated $156.3M in the six days since its release. The film opens in Japan on July 4.

[key2win]

We also can't forget Avengers: Age of Ultron. The Marvel/Disney film crossed $200M in China. It's also expected to cross the $400M mark here domestically and is the only film to do that so far this year. Internationally the film will cross the $800M threshhold for a $1.2B worldwide take. It still has to keep going to eclipse Furious 7's $1.5B worldwide gross, which is seems likely to do.

[key2win]

In 5th place for the week the still-impressive Avengers: Age of Ultron made $10.9M domestically, which it tossed onto its new domestic take of $427M. Internationally the film added $17.6M to its fearsome $894.2M in 91 territories. That's a worldwide sum of $1.32B.

[key2win]

Avengers: Age of Ultron with $1.32B passed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 to become the 5th highest grossing film of all-time, globally. Next up is Furious 7 and its $1.51B worldwide gross. Ultron has yet to open in Japan, which it does on July 4. So far Ultron top territories have been China ($233.6M), Korea ($82.2M), the UK ($72.8M) and Mexico ($50.4M).