Friday Estimates: Age of Ultron’s $84.5 Million is Second-Best Ever

May 2, 2015

The Avengers: Age of Ultron

Sources are reporting a $84.5 million opening day for The Avengers: Age of Ultron, the second-best day at the domestic box office in history, behind the $91 million earned by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II back in 2011. Given that Deathly Hallows made $43.5 million on Thursday night/midnight shows, to Ultron’s $27.6 million, this weekend’s release would have a legitimate claim to the biggest actual day (as opposed to the biggest “studio day”) if it wasn’t for the fact that The Avengers made $62 million on Friday, after $18.7 million at midnight shows. Ultron’s $56.9 million on Friday is a little bit shy of that number.

Continue below the fold for what that might mean for the weekend as a whole...

Age of Ultron’s chances of breaking the all-time weekend record are actually looking a little less rosy after Friday’s performance. After taking a $9 million lead from midnight shows, Ultron gave back $5 million on Friday, and is now ahead by just $4 million. The Avengers posted $69.6 million on Saturday, which was slightly better than its Friday number (up 12% to be precise). Ultron would need to need to have a Saturday 22% ahead of Friday to keep pace with The Avengers. A 12% increase would give it $63.7 million, and leave it behind overall by about $2 million. So at this point Ultron needs to do better through the weekend than The Avengers to break the record. That’s doable, but it’s going to be awfully close.

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Record openings, Friday Estimates, Avengers: Age of Ultron