Marvel Studios’ Captain America: The Winter Soldier, starring Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie and Robert Redford, won the battle for #1 for a second weekend in a row over 20th Century Fox’s Rio 2, capitalizing on its strong reviews and solid word-of-mouth for an estimated weekend take of $26.6 million, as it crossed the $200 million mark domestically. That’s down just 36% from last weekend, likely helped by schools being out on Good Friday and the Easter weekend. On top of that, “The Winter Soldier” added an additional $35.3 million overseas to bring its international total to $385 million and its global total to $586.6 million.
That’s fairly decent considering that in many countries it had to take on the release of Sony Pictures’ The Amazing Spider-Man 2 into 14 markets, where it grossed $47 million, the biggest international opening of the year, with $2.3 million of that amount coming from 50 IMAX screens. Sony has given a pretty clear breakdown of how well the movie has done in each of the opening territories, noting that most of them surpassed the opening of “The Winter Soldier” less than a month back, although it was likely helped by the Easter holiday in many countries.
$15 million of The Amazing Spider-Man 2‘s opening weekend came from the UK and Ireland, while Mexico accounted for $11.1 million of the movie’s international opening, Germany took in $6.2 million and Australia did $5.2 million. The movie also opened in Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland and Austria with the sequel opening in more international markets next week, well ahead of the movie’s May 2 North American release.
The way things are going, there’s a good chance that a superhero movie will be atop the box office every weekend either in North America or internationally (or both) for the next few weeks with Godzilla (who has also appeared in many comic books!) being the one movie that might break up that trend in mid-May.
