Man of Steel's Official Box Office: Fourth Best Non-Sequel Opening Of All Time

Man of Steel's official box office numbers for the weekend have come in, and the film generated [...]

Man of Steel Mondo poster

Man of Steel

's official box office numbers for the weekend have come in, and the film generated $113 million from Friday to Sunday domestically, along with $12 million from the discounted Wal-Mart screenings on Thursday. That gives the film the best opening weekend ever in June and the fourth-best opening ever for a non-sequel. The three films ahead of it are The Hunger Games, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Spider-Man. If the 7 p.m. Thursday screenings were added back into Man of Steel's take, it would actually rate second all time behind just The Hunger Games. As the importance of counting the opening weekend box office grows with bigger-budget movies and sequels dependent on the first couple of weeks of ticket sales, Hollywood is struggling a little with the math for event screenings like the Wal-Mart presales. After all, it's likely that some (probably most, but almost certainly not all) of those ticket holders would have gone to the midnight showing if that were the first available screening, meaning that their dollars would have been counted toward the three-day total. All told, the film generated $125 million in the U.S. and $71.6 million overseas. Overall, Warner Bros. is looking at a global haul of $196.7M in its first 4 days, and it still hasn't opened in a handful of markets. The film also immediately cracked the top ten films at the domestic box office for 2013, taking the #8 position and knocking Olympus Has Fallen out of the top ten. It's also already generated more money than relative hits like G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Warner's The Hangover Part III, which some experts predicted earlier in the year would actually outgross Man of Steel by the end of their respective theatrical runs. Box Office Mojo reports that Man of Steel also outperformed Superman Returns, which opened on a Wednesday and earned $84.6 million through its first five days. Even adjusting for ticket price inflation, that would come out to $102.5 million, compared to Man of Steel's $125 million haul so far.

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