With Shane Black and Marvel’s Iron Man 3 set to roll out across North America this weekend, the summer blockbuster has had a week-long head start at the international box office, and it has unsurprisingly topped every single one of the 42 markets it’s opened in.
The film has taken in an impressive $195.3m. over the weekend, and has broken records as the highest opening weekend of all time in Argentina, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
Its opening puts it even further ahead than The Avengers’ international opening last year, which took in $185.1m. over the same weekend in 2012. (If you’ll remember, The Avengers opened over the last weekend of April across the majority of the world, with its North American release date reserved, as usual, for the first weekend of May.)
Along with America and Canada, the blockbuster is still to open in China, Russia, and Germany, and with China and Russia, in particular, very much growing in terms of their IMAX releases in recent years, the international figures are sure to rise further still in the coming weeks.
I won’t go so far as to jinx it, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Iron Man 3 will be the first blockbuster to open this year and enter that elusive club that currently has but fifteen members.
With the movie debuting to such strong figures, even higher than previous expectations, the odds are looking even better for an incredibly strong opening in the US and Canada this weekend. I don’t think that expectations are for it to go so far as to exceed Joss Whedon’s debut with The Avengers last year, which took $207.4m. in its domestic debut. But the figures are thought to be tracking around the $150m. mark, which would put it comfortably within the top ten biggest opening weekends in the US and Canada.
The numbers are always going to be hard to predict with a blockbuster like this, and of course we won’t know for certain until the end of the weekend what the specifics will end up like. But smart money says the numbers are going to be huge.
Having seen Black’s Iron Man 3, I know firsthand what a ridiculously awesome blockbuster the movie is, and am confident that it will be dwarfing everything else to kick off what is surely going to be the biggest month of the year at the US box office.
Robert Downey, Jr. is once again immense in the lead as Tony Stark / Iron Man. And with such a stellar ensemble cast, a genius script, and immaculate direction, this is very much a must-see movie of the year. I can’t wait to find out what the numbers reach in North America this weekend.
