The franchise bump for the Marvel films continues as each sequel in the franchise continues to outperform the last in each respective series. From Iron Man to Iron Man 3 the franchise continued to grow and now Thor is showing the same continuing promise as Thor: The Dark World opened to $86.1 million over the opening weekend and showed great legs from Friday to Sunday along with an “A-” CinemaScore.
Thor 2‘s opening is the fourth largest of the year behind Iron Man 3 ($174.1m), Man of Steel ($116.6m) and Fast & Furious 6 ($97.3m). It’s the fifth largest opening for a Marvel Cinematic Universe release behind the three Iron Man films and, obviously, The Avengers.
The first Thor brought in $65.7 million as both it and Captain America: The First Avenger looked to be the red-headed steptwins of the Marvel franchise, but if the trend continues with Captain America: The Winter Soldier there’s no telling just how much money Marvel may be able to get out of moviegoers in the future. I guess the last question is to wonder how it’s upcoming unknown properties such as Guardians of the Galaxy will perform, which itself had a small introduction in the mid-credits sequence at the end of Thor 2.
In addition to its domestic haul, Thor 2 continued to rake in the dough overseas, adding $94 million to its overall total and bringing its current worldwide cume to $327 million. It should top out around $700 million by the time all is said and done and that is compared to the $449.3 million the first one made.
Clearly, Thor‘s arrival ended up burying Ender’s Game, which dipped 62.1% in its second weekend to $10.2 million, but the family animated feature Free Birds thrived, bringing in $11.1 million, only a 29.3% drop from last week’s opening.
Major Oscar contender, and presumed front-runner in several categories, 12 Years a Slave continued its expansion, now playing in 1,144 theaters after adding 734 this weekend, and brought in $6.6 million, bringing its cume to $17.3m after opening a month ago.
Speaking of adding theaters, Richard Curtis‘ About Time added over 1,000 theaters after a limited opening last weekend and scored $5.1 million. The film, which stars Rachel McAdams and Domnhall Gleeson has now made over $45 million.
Finally, opening in just four theaters, Fox’s The Book Thief scored $108,000 while Dallas Buyers Club expanded to 35 theaters and added $629,000 to its total after opening in just nine theaters last weekend.
Next weekend Thor should continue it’s strong run and I expect 12 Years a Slave and About Time will also continue to bring in audiences as the only new wide release is The Best Man Holiday, which also looks to me like it could do quite well. Otherwise, it’s just the limited release of Nebraska next weekend that’s likely to turn any heads as it’s still looking to take some sort of Oscar foothold that’s unlikely to actually happen.
