Friday, May 1, 2015

The Avengers: Age of Ultrons Record Breaking Thursday Night Numbers Point To A Huge Weekend

Yesterday, I predicted The Avengers: Age of Ultron would take in a whopping $22 million from Thursday night screenings, which proved to be off by about 25%. It turns out that the newest Avengers adventure wound up making $27.6 million last night, 48% up from the first Avengers movie and by far the biggest Thursday night numbers for any MCU movie. To boot, it's the sixth biggest Thursday night grosser of all-time, behind the final Harry Potter movie, The Dark Knight Rises and the last three Twilight films.

Now, the question on everyone's mind is how big this ones going to be for the overall weekend. The Avengers did about 10.1 times its late night grosses in 2012 for a huge $207 million opening. That trajectory would lead Age of Ultron to a $279 million opening. There's no way it goes that high, since its status as a sequel almost certainly will make it more frontloaded than its predecessor. Similarly, there's no way it goes as high as Iron Man 3, which held even better over its opening weekend, doing 11.2 times its $15.6 million Thursday night grosses (that kind of multiple would lead Age of Ultron to a gargantuan $308 million opening).

It seems more reasonable that Age of Ultron will play similarly to Marvel's two 2014 movies. Captain America: The Winter Soldier made $10.1 million at Thursday night screenings and did 9.4 times that haul for a $95 million opening. Guardians of The Galaxy was even bigger, doing $11.2 million on Thursday and doing 8.4 times that sum over the weekend for a $94 million opening. It should be noted that, unlike the other Marvel movies discussed here, Guardians opened during the heart of the summer, when kids/teens/college students typically don't have school on Friday, making Thursday night showings all the more appealing.

Being a sequel to a hugely popular film, it's likely a number of viewers went out last night to see the Avengers assemble as soon as possible. Keeping all that in mind, I say Age of Ultron will do about 8.2 times its Thursday night grosses, just slightly below Guardians, for a $226 million opening weekend. Predicting that large of an opening makes me feel wary, since conventional wisdom says no movie could possibly make that much cash in one weekend, but these tremendous Thursday night numbers show that The Avengers don't care for settling into financial conventions.


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