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 [...]
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.