Guardians of the Galaxy Passes Man of Steel at the Domestic Box Office

James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy has surpassed last year's Superman hit Man of Steel at the domestic box office, generating $294 million by yesterday versus Man of Steel's $291 million.

The film is en route to becoming the top-grossing franchise starter in Marvel history, which will make it the biggest non-sequel comic book opening ever for Marvel Studios or Warner Bros. Batman Begins generated just over $200 million, marking Man of Steel as DC's biggest comics-franchise opener, while Iron Man currently holds the mark for Marvel.

Spider-Man takes the all-time opening record with $403.7 million

Iron Man generated $318 million domestically to Guardians's $295 million (so far), meaning that the film has a ways to go (and probably about two weeks) before it takes the spot. Along the way, it will pass Iron Man 2. Presently, it's the top-grossing Marvel Studios movie without Iron Man in it, placing it fifth on the all-time list, at the domestic box office. Ahead of it are, in order, Marvel's The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Iron Man and Iron Man 2.

Avengers is not generally considered a first movie because even though there are planned Avengers sequels, the film is a follow-up to all of Marvel's first-generation movies and features characters introduced in those. Guardians did feature Thanos, who appeared briefly in the post-credits sequence for The Avengers, and The Collector, who had a similar cameo in Thor: The Dark World, but it was in all other ways an independent film.

It will be a while before we know whether Guardians of the Galaxy can best Man of Steel's $688 million global cume. They're quite a ways off from that, but still haven't opened in China, Japan (where it opens this weekend) or Italy yet.