We all knew that Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel was going to open big, the only question on our minds was how much. The Warner Bros. movie is set to kick off a new DC Cinematic Universe, with Man of Steel 2 already on the cards, heading towards the long-awaited Justice League movie.
All of that was expected to be based on the performance of Snyder’s blockbuster, and it did not disappoint over the weekend.
Here in the UK and Ireland, the film bowed to a very impressive £11.2m. (roughly .6m.), making it the second-biggest opening weekend of the year, falling just shy of Iron Man 3’s £11.4m. It did, however, have the biggest opening day of the year on our shores, and excluding previews, it’s taken the third-highest IMAX opening weekend of all time.
[UPDATED] The revised numbers are coming in, showing that the film debuted even stronger than previously thought! Across the Atlantic, it grossed a massive 8.7m. in North America across the first four days, breaking records as the biggest June opening of all time. The film opened in 4,207 theatres, with 3D in 3,357 of those, and achieved a welcome A- CinemaScore, which naturally helped boost word of mouth over the weekend, following months of successful promotion from Warner Bros.
Needless to say, it not only topped the US box office, but also took the #1 spot in all of the 24 other international markets it opened in over the weekend, reaching an immense 0.3m. in its first four days.
With a massive opening like that now behind it, we can definitely expect Warner Bros. to move forward quickly on Man of Steel 2, which is set to reunite director Zack Snyder with screenwriter David S. Goyer.
Man of Steel is now playing across the US and UK, and with more than two dozen markets still to open in in the next few weeks, including China, Japan, France, Germany, and more, I think we’re looking at our next billion-dollar movie of 2013.
