THE AVENGERS (Disney) just won’t slow down. If preliminary numbers at Deadline hold, Avengers made $44.5M on Saturday, up 50% from the prior day and down only 36% from the Saturday of its opening weekend, an extraordinarily good result. (In comparison, on The Hunger Games‘s 2d weekend, its Saturday was up only 33% from the prior day, and down 51% from its opening Saturday–and those were great numbers after such a mega-opening.) These numbers should indeed put Avengers over $100M for its 2d weekend, which is beyond unprecedented–it could be $25-30M over Avatar, the #2 film in that category, and Avatar’s 2d weekend was the Christmas holiday. (Avengers is unlikely to extend its record to a 3d weekend, though, since Avatar only went down a supernatural 10% in Weekend 3, which was New Year’s weekend.)
One thing Avengers didn’t have to worry about this weekend was strong competition. DARK SHADOWS (Warners) reportedly managed a 12% Saturday bump, only enough to get it to around a $28M weekend. That’s dark indeed for such an expensive movie.
THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL (Fox Searchlight) continued its very fine expansion, heading for a $15K average in 178 theatres.
Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY all weekend for updated boxoffice and analysis!
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