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Sunday May 10, 2015
Box Office: Second 'Avengers' has Second-Best Second Weekend of All Time
Avengers smash.
It's usually never good for a movie to drop nearly 60% off its first weekend box office total; but when that movie debuted at $191 million, well, then it's not so bad.
“Avengers: Age of Ultron” won the weekend again with an estimated $77.2 million haul. If that number holds, it will be the second-best second weekend of all time, after, of course, “The Avengers,” which grossed $103 million in its second weekend. There are six other movies whose second weekends landed in the 70s: from “Avatar” and “The Dark Knight” (both $75 mil), through “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” “Iron Man 3” and “Shrek 2,” to the original “Spider-Man” ($71). There are only four movies with second weekends in the 60s, so this is rarefied territory.
Meanwhile, “Hot Pursuit,” the road-trip comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara, wasn't exactly in hot pursuit of “Ultron,” as it debuted at $13 mil. That was good for second place. The rest is piddly stuff: $5 mil and below. It's all about “Ultron” right now. It's “Ultron” being “Ultron.”
Except at the worldwide box office, where there's still intrigue whether “Furious 7,” which is in fourth place all-time with $1.46 billion, can catch the original “The Avengers” at $1.51 billion. It might seem easy, a mere $50 million away; but “Furious 7” is winding down, grossing, for example, $5 mil at the domestic box office this weekend. That said, and despite it being a muscle-head muscle-car movie, “7” is getting its real juice from non-Americans. It's ony the third movie in history to gross more than $1 billion abroad. The others are Cameron films, “Titanic” and “Avatar,” which are in leagues by themselves.