Yeah, you know your movie is saddled with some superhuman expectations when $188 million draws a collective “meh.”
That’s the bittersweet fate of Avengers: Age of Ultron. The superhero movie zoomed to a massive $187.7 million opening (estimated, of course)—the second biggest opening ever. And to be clear, no one’s crying over Ultron’s box office footprint. I’m sure Disney executives are pricing new summer villas even as we speak. And consider this financial factet: Box Office Mojo lists 39 movies playing in theaters right now, which collectively earned $226.2 million. Take away Age of Ultron’s bank, and you’re left with $38.5 million. That means that Ultron earned nearly five times what the rest of the box office did. Five times! Those numbers might even make Tony Stark blink.
Oh, and Ultron continues to make money overseas hand over titanium-gloved fist. Its worldwide take (including this weekend’s domestic gross) is now $626.7 million, and climbing presumably by the millisecond.
But here’s the deal: The first Avengers movie (released in 2012) registered the biggest opening in history at $207.4 million, and Hollywood always expects that the next film should be bigger than the last. So anything less than a $210 million weekend was going to disappoint someone somewhere. I’m sure Loki, locked away in an Asgardian prison somewhere, is softly chuckling to himself.
The Age of Adeline was the best of the rest, collecting around $6.3 million. Now, if Adeline had earned that cash around when she was born and invested it wisely, the resulting nest egg might give Ultron a run for its money. As it is, the movie wasn’t even in the same galactic quadrant.
After four weeks at the top of the box office heap, Furious 7 finally sputtered a bit and shifted down into third place with a $6.1 million weekend. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 managed $5.6 million in its third week of business, while the impressively durable animated flick Home rounded out the Top Five with $3.3 million.
Final figures update: 1. Avengers: Age of Ultron, $191.3 million; 2. Furious 7, $6.6 million; 3. The Age of Adeline, $6.2 million; 4. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, $5.9 million; 5. Home, $3.5 million.
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