'Captain Marvel' smashes the box office with a $153 million opening, the biggest of 2019
Captain Marvel is a hit.
The latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe opened Friday, and it's currently angling toward a U.S. opening weekend total of $153 million. Once you add in all the other regions that hosted a Captain Marvel opening, that number shoots up to a $455 million take worldwide.
Assuming the weekend estimate bears out (or is exceeded), Captain Marvel's $153 million weekend is enough to make it the third-highest opening ever for the month of March, behind Beauty and the Beast ($174.8 million) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ($166 million). The Hunger Games, which opened with $152.5 million in March 2012, will move to the #4 spot.
A big piece of the overseas picture here belongs to China -- a familiar story for anyone who pays regular attention to the weekly box office race. Captain Marvel earned an estimated $89.3 million there, making it Marvel's third-best Chinese opening, behind Avengers: Infinity War and Captain America: Civil War.
In the bigger MCU picture, Captain Marvel's $153 million in the U.S. is more than enough to cement its seventh-place position -- out of 21 releases to date -- among opening weekends across the franchise. The top spots on that list belong to the various Avengers movies, plus Black Panther, Captain America: Civil War (which was basically billed as an Avengers movie), and Iron Man 3.
The other big box office metric people are curious about is Wonder Woman. The Gal Gadot-led DC Comics story opened in June 2017 with $103 million, considerably less than Captain Marvel. A lot of the credit for that goes to Disney's captive audience of Marvel fans; the studio can virtually count on a certain segment of the audience showing up for every movie, given that they're all part of a connected story.
Of course, Captain Marvel's March opening also means it's facing very little competition. Alita: Battle Angel, its closest competitor in terms of the type of audience it appeals to, opened multiple weeks ago. The current weekend's second-place box office finisher is How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.
Wonder Woman, on the other hand, opened in June 2017 with an assortment of mega-blockbusters crowded around it. There was competition from a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the second Guardians of the Galaxy, and the usual slate of more family-friendly summer offerings.
All of which is to say: Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman box office performances don't necessarily compare well. But Captain Marvel is off to a tremendous start, and it's currently poised to own the box office until at least early April, when DC's Shazam! hits theaters.
Topics Film
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
