Avengers: Age of Ultron Tops Box Office, But…
To no one’s surprise, Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron topped the Box Office this weekend. Again, not a surprise, however, what was a surprise was that the sequel did not top its predecessor. Box Office results come courtesy of Rentrak.
The original Avengers made roughly 207.7 million in its first weekend, while Age of Ultron roughly made 187.7. That’s a 20 million dollar drop. Now to be fair, this means that Avengers and Age of Ultron now hold the top two spots for best opening weekends ever (the previous No.2 was Iron Man 3 with $174 in its opening weekend), but this must come as a surprise to both fans and executives.
Why? Well, numbers. Age of Ultron was calculated getting roughly $27 million on its Thursday midnight showings. Then it made a total of $84.46 million after its showings on Friday, which means on Saturday and Sunday (again, roughly because numbers are still coming in) they only made an estimated $103 million (about $57.2 million on Saturday and $45.9 million Sunday). Many probably thought such a big decrease would happen on Sunday alone.
So what caused the dip? Well, it’s tough to say. Saturday may have been the biggest culprit, as there were a lot of sports events going on that day, including a huge boxing pay-per-view match between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. So if people had time to do either the movie or watch those events, they probably chose the latter. Another point may be that because people knew Age of Ultron would be a hit, they entirely avoided movie theaters this weekend in fear of crowded theaters and sold out tickets.
Regardless, this is not something to spark doom and gloom over. Avengers is No.1, and it will be for a while most likely. The movie is going to be successful on numerous levels, no doubt. Now, all eyes are on Ant-Man as the final movie in Phase 2 heads our way.