Iron Man 3 is going to be the number one movie at the box office this weekend, without a doubt. So, the really question is how big will its opening be? It isn’t expected to beat The Avengers, but it is likely that it will have one of the biggest three-day weekend debuts in history.
By Thursday, the film already hit over $300 million internationally and will easily pass Iron Man 2’s entire foreign total in a day or so. Box Office Mojo suggests that the film will do much better than the 2010 film, bucking the current trend of the third film in a franchise making less than the second film. This is because audiences are looking at Iron Man 3 as a follow-up to Avengers, not Iron Man 2, which was slammed by critics.
Iron Man 3 is doing better with the critics and is the start of Marvel and Disney’s ‘Phase 2’ films. It opens at 4,253 locations in 3D, 2D and IMAX, so audiences have their options. Both Box Office Mojo and Entertainment Weekly are predicting an opening north of $170 million, which would put it just ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2’s $169.2 million opening. That would put it in second place on the list of biggest openings eber, behind Avengers’ $207 million opening.
THR also predicts that the film will reach $600 million internationally by the end of Sunday.
Iron Man 3 stars Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Kingsley. It is director Shane Black’s first Marvel film. It is this weekend’s only new wide release and leaves last week’s No. 1, Pain & Gain, in the dust.
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