Without any doubt, the big news at the box office this weekend was the release of Zack Snyder’s long-awaited Superman reboot Man of Steel.
Co-produced by The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan and starring Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Russell Crowe and Laurence Fishburne, the movie brought in $9 million in midnight screenings on Thursday and an additional $12 million from a special 7pm screening with tickets sold exclusively through Walmart. While most studios would just incorporate that $12 million into Friday, the weekend and be done with it, for whatever reason that number is being kept separate, throwing off comparisons to other June openers slightly.
On Friday, the Superman reboot added another $44 million (including the $9 million portion of pre-screenings), making it the largest Friday opening for a June release, slightly besting 2010’s Toy Story 3 and 2004’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen opened on a Wednesday in June 2009. It went on to gross an estimated $125 for the weekend domestically including all those pre-screenings, which was more than enough to set a June opening record, putting it well ahead of Toy Story 3‘s $110 million from three years back. With Father’s Day on Sunday, there’s a good chance that number could be even higher unless Warner Bros. overestimated slightly to compensate for what should be a strong Father’s Day choice.
Internationally, Man of Steel bucked the summer trend of opening in other countries before North America, instead doing day-and-date in 24 oversea markets including the UK, Korea and Mexico where it grossed an estimated $71.6 million over the weekend on 9,710 screens. It opened #1 in all those countries including the UK where it dominated the market with $17.1 million or 75% of the country’s total box office. Mexico did similar business with $9.8 million while in Korea, it took 50% of the market share with $8.8 million. Its worldwide total so far is $196.7 million.
The IMAX Corporation also saw June records broken with Man of Steel playing on 331 domestic IMAX screens where it brought in $13.3 million, as well as 79 international screens where it added another $4.2 million, for a total worldwide weekend IMAX gross of $17.5 million.
You can read the full box office report for the weekend over on ComingSoon.net.
