Avengers: Infinity War beats Star Wars for box office record
The latest Marvel movie assembles a record-setting $250 million opening weekend in the US, besting Star Wars and Jurassic World.
After a decade of films, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is still toppling foes, this time with a record-setting opening weekend for Avengers: Infinity War.
The movie crushed the weekend with a record-setting $250 million in the US -- leap-frogging Star Wars: The Force Awakens' previous record of $248 million.
The film opened Thursday night with an MCU record of $39 million in the US. Even after that night, studio estimates remained cautiously optimistic, predicting between $225 and $245 million for opening weekend.
Overseas, the Avengers set records as well with a second-best-ever foreign total of $380 million. That puts our heroes just behind last year's The Fate of the Furious' $443 million opening.
That means globally, Infinity War has made $630 million, breaking the previous record by almost $90 million.
In his CNET review, Mike Sorrentino noted that "with so many players and planets, there's plenty of potential for things to go awry. But the streamlined story makes the approximately 2.5-hour movie fly by." By incorporating elements of each of the MCU movies, the filmmakers managed to focus on the big bad that is Thanos and bring some heart to the film in a way that truly succeeds.
Following Black Panther's record-setting run, Avengers: Infinity War has been racking up its own as well. On Friday it became the first comic book movie to pass $100 million on opening day ($106M), putting it behind only Force Awakens ($119M).
And in India, the Marvel movie has become the highest-grossing Hollywood film in the country. It's already that country's third highest-grossing film for the year, and is on pace to beat other Bollywood releases for the No. 1 slot.
Three Marvel films now own spots on the list of top 10 all-time opening weekend: Infinity War, Black Panther and 2012's The Avengers.
For more on the latest Avengers outing, check out our spoiler-free review, our crowdsourced review and what you need to know about that post-credits scene.
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