Box Office: 'Avengers: Age Of Ultron' Nabs Massive $27.6M Thursday

Marvel and Walt Disney's  Avengers: Age Of Ultron exploded out of the gate on Thursday, with $27.6 million in grosses from shows starting last night at 7:00pm. That's the biggest Marvel movie preview debut ever, well-ahead of The Avengers ($18.7m). It's behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II which earned $43.5 million in Thursday-at-midnight showings back in July of 2011 as well as, respectively, The Dark Knight Rises ($30.6m), Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part II ($30.4m), Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part I ($30.3m), and Twilight Saga: Eclipse ($30m). It is just ahead of The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($26.3m), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($25.25m),  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I ($24m), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($22.2m), and The Hunger Games ($19.7m). So yes, Avengers: Age of Ultron is the tenth film to top $20m in its Thursday preview debut.

This whopping $27.6 million Thursday figure soars above the previous Marvel preview highs, specifically The Avengers ($18.7 million), Iron Man 3 ($15.6m), and Guardians of the Galaxy ($11.2m). The Marvel movies tend to be "play all weekend to general audiences" blockbusters. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been around long enough that we can make reasonable predictions about the opening weekend take just from the Thursday night box office. When Walt Disney reports that Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron earned $27.6 million on its advance-night Thursday showings in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D, it means that, under normal circumstances, we're looking at what amounts to 9-12% of its opening weekend. So just running those numbers, we're looking at a debut weekend of $230m-$306m. So does that mean we're looking at the first $300m debut weekend?  Well I would presume not, but that certainly would snap me out of my relative box office doldrums. But first some box office history for those who came in late.

In 2011, Thor debuted with $3.25 million in midnight showings, leading the way to a $65m debut. That means Thor earned about 5% of its opening weekend at midnight. Captain America earned 6% ($4m) of its $65m haul at midnight two months later. That was relatively normal when it came to non-sequels outside of heavily-anticipated teen or geek-centric fare like The Hunger Games (13%) or Pacific Rim (9.6%), especially back when midnight/Thursday sneaks were just starting to become status quo across-the-board. Captain: America: The Winter Soldier scored $10.2m in April but was unexpectedly front-loaded over the weekend, pulling 10.7% of its debut weekend on Thursday and ending the frame with a still dynamite $95m debut. Guardians of the Galaxy was even more front-loaded, earning a "whopping" 11.9% of its debut weekend on Thursday, with a $11.2m haul translating into a mere $94m weekend. And Thanos wept... but mostly because he still didn't have any Infinity Stones.

For reference, Iron Man 2 earned 5.6% of its $128 million debut ($7.5m) in 2010 at midnight (just before midnight screenings became a regular event for even general moviegoers), Iron Man 3 earned about 9% of its $175m debut on Thursday, and The Avengers earned about 9% of its $207m figure at Thursday midnight screenings. In terms of out-of-summer debuts, Thor: The Dark World earned $7.1m on Thursday last November, leading to a $85.7m debut weekend, or about 8% of its weekend take before the official start of the weekend. Iron Man 2's 5.6% is basically out of the question, although such a figure would give Avengers 2 a hilarious $492m opening weekend. Unless frontloading is uncommonly large for a Marvel movie, and since it didn't shatter any Thursday preview records I'm inclined to think it won't be, it looks like we're still looking at a 12%-15% Thursday-to-weekend figure ($184m-$230m), with reasonable guesstimates falling just a bit over/under the $220 million mark (12.5%). Yes, I am guessing more frontloading than usual both because of the whole "it's a sequel" thing and because the Thursday number is so much larger than the Marvel norm.

Obviously we'll know when we know. But if you want a Friday number that will shock me out of complacency, give me a Friday that tops the $114 million weekend of Spider-Man. Yes, I know, inflation/3D/etc., but I digress. For what it's worth, if Avengers 2 has the same "did 4.3x its Thursday number over Friday" pattern as Avengers 1, the Friday number will be around $119m. The advance night number is already awesome, even if it ends up being massively front-loaded. If it plays like The Fault in Our Stars (around 17%) and merely gets to $157 million.If it plays like a Harry Potter/Twilight sequel or The Dark Knight Rises (18%-20%), it gets to $138m-$153m, and an utterly implausible 25% (Harry Potter 7.2, screwing up midnight movie math since 2011), it gets to $106m for the weekend. I don't think any of those are realistic possibilities, I just wanted to point out how not-frontloaded the Marvel films tend to be.

For the record, it needs a reasonable 13.3% to get above the $207 million debut haul of the first film. And if it plays identically to The Avengers all weekend, it gets a $119.2m opening day (including a $90.4m pure Friday number), a $102.67m  Saturday, and a $84.1m Sunday for an absurd $307m opening weekend.  Come what may, we're presumably looking at the biggest opening weekend ever and possibly something truly impressive beyond "Oh, it made a little more than Avengers." Or the film could be massively front-loaded and have to settle for over/under $200m for the weekend, which again would make Thanos very sad. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts below. And if you were at that 27-hour Marvel movie marathon thing, I want details!