Movies With Butter

Ok, it’s time to lower box office projections for the weekend just a tad. “The Avengers” assembled $18.7M at the box office from Thursday’s midnight screenings. It’s about a million off “The Hunger Games”’s $19.7M. Suzanne Collins’ big screen adaptation went on to gross $153M during its opening weekend, the third best opening of all time and best for a non-sequel.

I was projecting that, with great reviews and pre-release buzz, it would break the all-time record $169M opening by “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.” The concluding film in the Harry Potter franchise took in a record-breaking $43.5M during midnight screenings.

So the $18.7M midnight haul by “The Avengers” is far from record-breaking, but is still one of the best of all time. The same can probably be said of its impending opening weekend figure: it’ll be huge, but won’t shatter any records.

It’s just time come back down to Earth and calm down for a little bit. “The Avengers”’ opening weekend will probably come closer to “The Hunger Games”’ $153M than “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2”’s $169M.

It’s just a tad disappointing if you, like me, were swept up by the hype. Nonetheless, it’s still a huge success for Disney (and Marvel) and will probably make up for “John Carter”’s $200M write-down.

Through yesterday, “The Avengers” has taken in a massive $304M after just a week in foreign markets. When the weekend’s over, it’ll have a worldwide total between $500M-$550M. That’s pretty awesome.

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