Captain America has highest April opening of all time
“CAPTAIN America: The Winter Soldier” shot straight to the top of North America’s box office in its debut weekend — and scored the biggest April opening of all time.
The superhero saga from Disney’s Marvel Studios, starring Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson, pulled in a hefty US$95 million, box office tracker Exhibitor Relations said.
The critically-praised movie has made us$207 million outside the United States, for a global take so far of $303.3 million, it said.
The 3-D, $170-million sequel to “Captain America: The First Avenger” is also the biggest debut so far this year, outearning the previous box office winner The Lego Movie, which in February grossed $69 million in its first weekend.
Buoyed by its record opening, Marvel meanwhile announced that the third Captain America instalment will be released on May 6, 2016.
That announcement sets up a clash of the comic-book titans, as rival studio giant Warner Bros have pencilled in the same date for the release of their so far untitled Superman-Batman movie.
The Warner Bros movie project started life as a sequel to last year’s Man of Steel, a reboot of the Superman franchise directed by Zack Snyder with Briton Henry Cavill in the title role.
But it is now set to bring in the caped crusader in a superhero mash-up, a formula which has had repeated success in recent years.
Before then, fans of comic book movie characters can look forward to another helping of Captain America along with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, set for May 1, 2015.
