Captain Marvel is a marvel.
Following several weeks of troublingly-low box office returns in North America, Marvel’s latest superhero epic blasted onto the scene with an estimated $153 million opening weekend, surpassing The Hunger Games ($152.5 million) for 3rd place among all-time March openers, behind only Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast ($174.7 million) and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice ($166 million). The sizzling debut is also the 7th-highest opening weekend among MCU titles, behind Avengers: Infinity War ($257.6 million), The Avengers ($207.4 million), Black Panther ($202 million), Avengers: Age of Ultron ($191.2 million), Captain America: Civil War ($179.1 million), and Iron Man 3 ($174.1 million). Additionally, it managed to exceed the total gross of every film released so far this year in a single weekend, dwarfing former No. 1 Glass‘s $109.7 million.
Captain Marvel had a number of things going for it. In addition to the massive amount of hype that’s been building ever since the project was first announced, it debuted during a relatively fallow period in the marketplace. Though we’ve seen high-profile studio releases like Glass and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World perform reasonably well, Captain Marvel is the year’s first true tentpole release, and moviegoers were clearly starved for an A-list blockbuster. It helped that the film debuted to mainly positive reviews (it currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 79%), which likely helped the film far surpass the studio’s $125 million projection going into the weekend.
Word-of-mouth didn’t hurt either, with Captain Marvel garnering an “A” Cinemascore from opening day audiences (its 53% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes should be taken with a grain of salt, as it may have suffered from a trolling campaign similar to recent releases like Ghostbusters and Star Wars: The Last Jedi). It also received a boost from the massive theater count (it opened in 4,310 locations, a record for March) and the high number of premium showings, with over 3,000 locations screening the film in 3D (which accounted for 14% of all tickets sold) and over 400 in IMAX (9%), in addition to PLF and 4D formats.
The cultural significance of Captain Marvel also cannot be discounted as a factor in its success. It remains a fact that the film is the first in the MCU to center solely on a woman superhero, and only the second in recent years after 2017’s hugely-successful Wonder Woman from Warner Bros./DC. That made it a highly-anticipated title not only for fans of Marvel and superhero movies but for moviegoers generally (the opening-weekend audience breakdown was 45% female, 55% male). Marvel also made a smart play by teasing the character’s appearance in the forthcoming Avengers: Endgame at the end of last year’s Infinity War, which helped set up Captain Marvel the movie as a must-see connective link between the two team-based installments and helped power it to supersized heights.
With Captain Marvel the only newcomer in wide release this weekend, the remainder of the Top 10 was given over to holdovers. In second place was Universal’s How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, which was knocked from the top spot in its third frame with an estimated $14.7 million, representing a drop of 51% from last weekend. Overall, the threequel’s weekend-to-weekend drops are more in line with the second film in the series than the first, which eased a mere 14% in its third weekend and ended its North American run with $217.5 million. With $119.6 million in the bank after 17 days, The Hidden World is now running about 10% behind the first How to Train Your Dragon and about 2% the second installment, which had $121.9 million at the same point in its run. Surely, the presence of Captain Marvel in the marketplace put at least a slight dent in The Hidden World‘s performance this weekend.
In third place was Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral, which brought in $12 million, a drop of 55% from its $27 million debut last weekend. That’s a pretty standard drop for a series that tends to be frontloaded, with the majority falling more than 50% in their sophomore frames. With $45.8 million to date, the supposed final entry in the long-running comedy series ranks as yet another hit in a franchise that has been a reliable performer for the duration of its nearly 15-year run. Including this weekend’s returns for Family Funeral, the series has now grossed more than $500 million in North America over a total of nine films.
Finishing in fourth place in its fifth weekend was Warner Bros.’ The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, which continues to creep towards the $100 million mark – a threshold the first film crossed in just nine days of release. With an estimated $3.8 million this weekend, the total for the animated sequel now stands at a disappointing $97.1 million.
Another underperforming February release, Alita: Battle Angel, finished in fifth place with an estimated $3.2 million, giving the Fox sci-fi actioner a $78.3 million cume after 4 weeks. In sixth, meanwhile, Best Picture winner Green Book took in an estimated $2.4 million in its seventeenth weekend, giving the Universal Best Picture winner a solid $80.1 million to date.
Seventh and eighth place went to Isn’t It Romantic and Greta, which grossed an estimated $2.4 million and $2.2 million, respectively. The Rebel Wilson rom-com has banked $44.1 million after four weeks of release, while the total for the horror-thriller starring Isabelle Huppert stands at a disappointing $8.3 million after ten days.
Rounding out the Top 10, the wrestling dramedy Fighting With My Family took ninth in its fourth weekend with an estimated $2.18 million, giving the UA release a decent $18.6 million so far. In tenth, finally, was the second weekend of NEON’s Apollo 11, which added nearly 300 locations in its sophomore frame and brought in an estimated $1.3 million, giving the critically-acclaimed space documentary a per-screen average of $3,212 and a total of $3.7 million after ten days.
Limited Release:
The critically-acclaimed Julianne Moore drama Gloria Bell debuted solidly this weekend, taking in an estimated $154K on just five screens. That translates to a healthy per-screen average of over $30K for the A24 release, which will expand wider in the coming weeks.
Overseas Update:
Captain Marvel brought in even bigger returns overseas, where it debuted to an enormous $302 million from 53 markets. It opened to a terrific $89.3 million in China alone, ranking it as the third-highest MCU opening ever in the country behind only Avengers: Infinity War and Captain America: Civil War. Worldwide, the film brought in an estimated $455 million, which would make it the sixth-highest global debut of all time. You can get more context on the film’s powerhouse global performance in our in-depth international post here.
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World brought in an estimated $21.7 million overseas this weekend, bringing the international total for the animated follow-up to a fantastic $315.5 million and its worldwide cume to $435.2 million.
The post <em>Captain Marvel</em> Rockets to Sensational $153M, Racking Up 3rd Best March Opening Ever appeared first on Boxoffice.
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