"The Avengers" Opens to Record-Breaking $200.3 Million

[LightningBug]

From what I heard from freinds in England it's a hong kong knock off of Transformers.

That is very flattering praise for Transformers, especially since Avengers was smart, well made, and enjoyable to watch, and transformers was a poorly written, directed, and acted piece of garbage.

[Spideybono]

Anyone else feel some pride that the Top 3 weekend openers of all time are comic book movies? It shows that there's a lot of interest in these characters – not just from comic book readers – but from people in general.

Harry Potter is not a comic book, so only 2 out of the top 3 are

Anyway, I am very gratified that Avengers is number 1. I have been reading the book for 25 years and I was made fun of in high school for liking comics and wearing Spider-Man shirts all of the time back in 1988. So yea, I am like I knew this back then how cool Avengers was it just took you guys 25 years to catch up

[Alex6166]

Well, Better luck next time, Marvel. :)

If you adjust for inflation I think the two biggest movies in the U.S. are Gone with the wind followed by the original Star Wars. Both have robots in them, I think. Coincidence?

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

DC/Warner Bros must feel like ***t today. With the exception of the Nolan BATMAN films, they've COMPLETELY MISMANAGED their film properties.

I think one should remember that DC is the comic book company and Warner Brothers is the movie company. WB the movie company doesn't just look at the DC movie properties. It looks at the overall output of movies--and how all the movies have performed. According to Box Office Mojo the top ten WB movies have been:

1 The Dark Knight WB $533,345,358 4,366 $158,411,483 4,366 7/18/08
2 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 WB $381,011,219 4,375 $169,189,427 4,375 7/15/11
3 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone WB $317,575,550 3,672 $90,294,621 3,672 11/16/01
4 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince WB $301,959,197 4,455 $77,835,727 4,325 7/15/09
5 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 WB $295,983,305 4,125 $125,017,372 4,125 11/19/10
6 Inception WB $292,576,195 3,792 $62,785,337 3,792 7/16/10
7 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix WB $292,004,738 4,285 $77,108,414 4,285 7/11/07
8 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire WB $290,013,036 3,858 $102,685,961 3,858 11/18/05
9 The Matrix Reloaded WB $281,576,461 3,603 $91,774,413 3,603 5/15/03
10 The Hangover WB $277,322,503 3,545 $44,979,319 3,269 6/5/09

Granted Dark Knight is the top movie for Warner, but none of the other top ten are DC properties. So is DC really so important to WB in terms of all their movie properties?

For DC the comic book company, it's kind of powerless in how it can affect WB's movie production. It can only look on with some nervous bemusement at how the movies perform. If WB makes mistakes, DC just has to silently suffer.

Now if we're talking about this new entity called DC Entertainment--there I think someone named Diane Nelson must feel like crap. But again all the past failures of Warner Brothers can't be laid at her door. She's stuck with a lot of productions in development before DC Entertainment was created.

And then if we turn to Marvel/Disney, there again the story of movie production is something very different from what we see in terms of DC and WB. The Avengers movie is a Paramount production not Disney. The Spider-Man movies come from Sony/Columbia. The X-Men movies come from Fox. So the Disney movie studios can't really dance in the street over the success of these Marvel movies, since they're being made by their competition. Of course, the Marvel Studios arm can do a Snoopy happy dance because by farming out their properties to different studios they seem to have done okay. This is a very different paradigm from DC/Warner, where WB usually produces or co-produces DC properties.

Disney has a right to party, because even though they can't list Marvel movies in their top ten, their other properties have performed well for their Buena Vista studios.

1 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest BV $423,315,812 4,133 $135,634,554 4,133 7/7/06
2 Toy Story 3 BV $415,004,880 4,028 $110,307,189 4,028 6/18/10
3 Finding Nemo BV $339,714,978 3,425 $70,251,710 3,374 5/30/03
4 Alice in Wonderland (2010) BV $334,191,110 3,739 $116,101,023 3,728 3/5/10
5 The Lion King BV $312,855,561 2,624 $1,586,753 2 6/15/94
6 Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End BV $309,420,425 4,362 $114,732,820 4,362 5/25/07
7 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl BV $305,413,918 3,416 $46,630,690 3,269 7/9/03
8 The Sixth Sense BV $293,506,292 2,821 $26,681,262 2,161 8/6/99
9 Up BV $293,004,164 3,886 $68,108,790 3,766 5/29/09
10 The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe BV $291,710,957 3,853 $65,556,312 3,616 12/9/05

[Spideybono]

Believe it or not, Avengers is the first Marvel film for Disney, even thou Iron Man 3 will be the first with a Disney logo. When Disney wanted to buy the rights back, for some reason Paramount wanted to keep their name and logo on this film. So yea, trust me this was shipped by Disney. If you don't believe me, watch it again and at the end of the credits, it states that it is a Disney production


EDIT:
A link to the Avengers info on Boxofficemojo.com

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=avengers11.htm

[MichaelPaytonMZ]

That is very flattering praise for Transformers, especially since Avengers was smart, well made, and enjoyable to watch, and transformers was a poorly written, directed, and acted piece of garbage.

Sensitive much? he was talking about Battleship.


Tho a comparison of the final act to the final act of TF3 would be apt. Largest building in the city used to open space bridge for aliens/alien homeworld? Check. Giant mechanical worm-like monster destroying city? Check. it's like they wrote the final act script after have come home from the movies last summer. Both movies were rather by the numbers plot wise, as are most movies of this sort. That was one of my biggest disappointments with the Avengers. Whedon didn't even try to think outside the epic action movie box here. This would have been more excusable if the characters stories weren't so by the numbers as well. Heroes meet. Heroes fight each other. Heroes eventually work well together (and work like they had been training together for years) to stop the enemy. Whedon is not known for dumbing down his work for the masses, which is why he has remained a cult icon and not a mass media success. I expect more than a Michael Bay adaption of a typical Stan Lee plot from him and just didn't get it. Hopefully Disney will not be blinded by the cash and will allow him to write at his normal level for a sequel and doesn't demand a dumbed down sequel for the masses.

[Maidman]

WOOHOO Awesome movie!!!!

[MichaelPaytonMZ]

DC/Warner Bros must feel like ***t today. With the exception of the Nolan BATMAN films, they've COMPLETELY MISMANAGED their film properties.

DC has always works better on TV, where they can develop their characters over time. Until the Nolan movies, even Batman had better luck on Tv, with only the first Burton movie really working. The others in that series grew worse by tenfold with each new flick. Meanwhile the 90s cartoon is still regarded as the definitive Batman run for any media, and the 60s TV show was such a huge hit that it actually drove up sales of color television sets. Superman has had four separate live action TV shows, running a total of 24 seasons. (Whether you personally like them, 24 years worth of live action Superman still tops every other superhero series in the US.) Out of five modern live-action films only two are considered worth watching, with the other three doing George Clooney as Batman-level damage to the franchise. Wonder Woman is still viewed as the TV version from the 1970s by the general public.

Marvel attempted to bring most of their characters to live action TV in the 1970s, but only the Hulk and Spider-man made it to series, with Spidey being axed after just a few months.

WB has hinted at bringing Batman back to TV after this movie. I say go for it. Tie it into Arrow and Booster Gold, maybe thru a guest character or two crossing between series/networks. Someone like the Phantom Stranger, Boston Brand or even the Martian Manhunter. Allow the JLA to build thru these shows over time and THEN bring the full team to the big screen.

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

Maybe Justice League would work as a TV series, like an ensemble cast police drama. If they used mainly non-powered heroes. Batman in the lead, with Green Arrow, Black Canary, Mr. Terrific, Blue Beetle, and Zatanna.

[Stressfactor]

Need to figure in Inflation prices from previous films (Dark Knight was 4 years ago) and adjust to see how it compares.

Not only that the 3-D issue needs to be factored in as well.

A lot of people have pointed out that some recent films have been 'hits' but probably wouldn't have been a few years back because the extra $$$$ some people shell out for the 3-D allows the films to earn more money on ticket prices rather than volume of ticket sales.

[littlenomad]

One thing that doesn't help DC is that it's big heroes come from fictional hometowns. Gotham isn't real. Don't chime in with "they mean it to be New York or Chicago"...they call it "Gotham" and Gotham it isn't a real place. Batman never leaves Gotham in his movies for any length of time. Metropolis? Not real. Isn't New York. They don't call it New York, they call it "Metropolis." Superman does get around, though, so that's a plus. [But next year's movie will be the 6th incarnation/reboot of Superman in 30 years (I'm counting at least 3 live-action TV series since the late 1980s)...and I'm not sure if people will want any more...especially since there hasn't been an actor since Christopher Reeve that anyone will truly accept in the role.] And what's this Central City, Coast City garbage?

I think last year everyone was worried about "Superhero Fatigue." I think NOW is the time we'll see if Superhero Fatigue will truly exist or not. Executives are seeing Avengers make cash registers jingle, and that means we may soon be buried under an avalanche of crappy superhero adaptations...quick cash-ins. I'm not saying Marvel is going to do it, but I daresay WB, 20th Century Fox, etc., will.

So I'm happy that my childhood heroes--underdogs until recently, as far as widespread awareness of their existence was concerned (what average citizen knew what an Iron Man was before 2008?)--got a HUGE moment in the spotlight this weekend. To me, this is almost like some little midwestern college kicking tail and winning the NCAA Basketball tournament. But it's ironic that while these 7 characters (Cap, IM, Thor, Hulk, Widow, Hawkeye, Fury) have never been more popular, the medium they sprang from has never been less popular. And this may be the peak for superhero popularity. I hope not! But what comes next is going to have to be seriously well-crafted. There's no half-assing it from here on out, if the genre is to remain relevant.

[littlenomad]

Sorry, I think that should have been at least two separate posts, because those statements aren't entirely connected to each other.

[hysang]

DC/Warner Bros must feel like ***t today. With the exception of the Nolan BATMAN films, they've COMPLETELY MISMANAGED their film properties. They could have had a Wonder Woman movie by JOSS WHEDON! He was set to direct it when the higher ups decided to kill the project. Whedon probably would have gone on to film the Justice League movie.

I think DC/Warner Bros need to fire everyone at the top of their media/movies division. They're simply too dumb to run that company.

Since Green Lantern has been ruined for an age in both comics and movies by the ineptitude of Geoff Johns, I'd leave that property out for at least 10 years. I'd establish movies of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman (batman already has been established by Nolan), The Flash, Cyborg, The Atom and maybe Zatanna. Then maybe a Justice League movie would be do-able. Of course, you'd either need to steal Joss Whedon from Marvel OR find someone just as talented to direct the movies. The other thing I'd do is recruit the screenwriters from the comics themselves: Grant Morrison, Scott Snyder, Jeff Lemire and Warren Ellis. These writers know what make great comic book stories. (not the awful ones that Bob Harras likes).

I think what's outrageous about the incompetent Managers of DC/Warner Bros is that they didn't realized that when Marvel releases movies like Thor, a Wonder Woman movie will be viewed as derivative or even a NEW GODS movie would be viewed as derivative because there are similar elements involved. When Marvel releases a movie like IRON MAN, a CYBORG movie would also be seen as derivative. There never seemed to be any urgency at DC/Warner Bros to get their properties out there before Marvel.

One thing that DC does better than Marvel is parallel universes, They should leverage that aspect of their comic book universe in their movie universe.

The final nail in the DC's coffin is now that AVENGERS 2 will feature THANOS, DC can't use DARKSEID as the main villain of their potential JLA movie.

Everything about this is so very true. And I don't hate DC Comics. I grew up with DC as much as I grew up with Marvel....but they are just not doing a good job with their properties. Not at all. And I am not happy with a lot of what Marvel is doing. They just seem to be better at it (bad Ghost Rider and Daredevil movies aside).

[El Penitente]

Now all the lamestreamers know who the Avengers are.

[kmeyers]

Maybe Justice League would work as a TV series, like an ensemble cast police drama. If they used mainly non-powered heroes. Batman in the lead, with Green Arrow, Black Canary, Mr. Terrific, Blue Beetle, and Zatanna.

It's funny, because DC seems to have the much better animated movies and tv shows(aside from Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes), while Marvel is totally kicking ass in live action(aside form Batman).

And while I'm glad that the Avengers movie is making money and breaking records, that doesnt really matter to me. I'm just glad that it actually lived up to the hype and was a great movie.