By: Russ Burlingame on May 20, 2012
If current estimates by Box Office Mojo hold out,The Avengers will exceed estimates (originally set at $53 million) and Battleship will perform below projections (set at $40 million) this weekend, bringing in $55 million and $25.3 million, respectively, but still take the #1 and #2 spots at the box office ahead of The Dictator ($17 million), Dark Shadows ($12 million) and What to Expect When You’re Expecting ($10 million).
A 46% drop in the third week of release is pretty reasonable for The Avengers, although $30 million is a very disappointing opening weekend for Battleship, which was already pushing its luck if it had accomplished its projected $40 million opening. Not only is it the worst domestic opening for any film ever that cost more than $200 million to make, but it’s also probably a bad sign for star Taylor Kitsch, whose previous headlining gig was in Disney’s John Carter, broke a series of similar records for the way it underperformed this spring.
The Avengers took in another $55 million at the domestic box office to rise to the sixth-highest grossing film ever in the United States, behind Avatar, Titanic, The Dark Knight, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Star Wars. Expand that to worldwide gross, though, and The Avengers surpasses the Star Wars films to take fourth place (The Dark Knight also doesn’t make the top five worldwide; the #3 all-time grosser is Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 2).
