‘ Avengers’ debut smashes records
The f ilm takes in $ 250 million domestically and $ 630 million globally.
Marvel’s “Avengers: Inf inity War,” the only new wide release this past weekend, set a record at the box office with an estimated $ 250- million debut in the U. S. and Canada, according to f igures from measurement firm ComScore.
That makes it the highest domestic opening of all time ( not adjusted for inf lation) — above the $ 247.9- million debut of 2015’ s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” — as well as the highest global opening of all time, with $ 630 million in worldwide receipts even without the Chinese market. ( The f ilm will open in China on May 11.)
“It’s an extraordinary, extraordinary weekend,” said Dave Hollis, Disney’s distribution chief.
The third “Avengers” film and the 19th entry from Marvel Studios, “Infinity War” was well received by audiences and critics, earning an 84% “fresh” rating on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes and an A rating from user- polling f irm CinemaScore.
Every f ilm in the MCU has scored at least an A- on CinemaScore ( with the exception of the f irst “Thor,” which earned a B+). “Infinity War” is the latest in a streak of A ratings: with “Thor: The Dark World” being the last to get an A- and “Black Panther” and “Marvel’s the Avengers” the only two to get an A+.
“More than anything,” added Hollis, the success of “Infinity War” was a “ref lection of the culmination of 10 years of work from [ Marvel Studios President] Kevin Feige, [ producers] Louis D’Esposito and Victoria Alonso, the entire Marvel Studios team. They’ve done so much in layering this universe film- by- film … and it all led to this.”
With a 2- hour, 40- minute runtime, the f ilm is among the longest of the Marvel entries. However, fans who’ve been waiting for an all- start superhero teamup of this caliber were nonplussed by the extended run time.
“The fans probably thought the [ film] was over much too quickly,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at ComScore. “And clearly no one was put off by the long running time, which proves that too much of a good thing is just f ine when it comes to Marvel.
” Heck, people are more than happy to sit through an end- credits sequence worthy of its own showtime to get to what fans have come to expect at the tail end of the experience,” he