As expected, Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Civil War continued its blockbuster run with another big weekend at the top of the box-office charts, further solidifying the studio’s reign as the gold standard of cinematic universes.
The film, which pits hero against hero in a feud that divides The Avengers team and introduces several new characters to Marvel’s movie-verse, added another $72.5 million to its domestic earnings and brought its worldwide tally to $940.9 million. Civil War is now just $59 million shy of crossing $1 billion — a feat that only 24 movies have ever accomplished — after only two weekends in theaters.
Along with having the biggest domestic opening weekend of 2016 and the fifth highest-grossing premiere of all time, Civil War now ranks as the sixth highest-grossing superhero movie of all time worldwide (after The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Iron Man 3, The Dark Knight Rises, and The Dark Knight) and is expected to find its way into the top ten highest-grossing films of all time before it leaves theaters.
For the sake of comparison, it took Captain America: Civil War just two weekends to earn more than Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice has earned worldwide over the course of its eight-week run up to this point. (The latter film also dropped out of the top ten box-office rankings this week, falling to 14th for the weekend.)
# | Title | Weekend | U.S. Total | Worldwide Total |
1. | Captain America: Civil War | $72.5M | $295.9M | $940.9M |
2. | The Jungle Book | $17.7M | $311.7M | $828M |
3. | Money Monster | $15M | $15M | $19.7M |
4. | The Darkness | $5.2M | $5.2M | $5.2M |
5. | Mother’s Day | $3.2M | $28.7M | $28.7M |
6. | Zootopia | $2.8M | $331.8M | $969.8M |
7. | The Huntsman: Winter’s War | $2.6M | $44.5M | $153.9M |
8. | Keanu | $1.9M | $18.6M | $18.6M |
9. | Barbershop: The Next Cut | $1.7M | $51.3M | $51.9M |
10. | The Boss | $1.2M | $61.1M | $73M |
While the individual accolades for Captain America: Civil War are impressive, the film’s success also pushed Marvel Studios past a lofty mark in Hollywood history. With the weekend earnings from Civil War, Marvel has now earned more than $10 billion from the 13 movies in its cinematic universe that have been released over the last nine years.
Beyond Civil War, Disney’s other big film, The Jungle Book, continued its strong run in theaters over the weekend. The live-action remake of the 1967 animated feature is riding strong reviews to a surprisingly successful run in theaters, and took second place for the weekend with $17.7 million domestically. It currently ranks as the fourth highest-grossing film of the year both in U.S. theaters and worldwide.
It was a mixed bag for the only two new releases to make it into the weekend’s top ten films.
The thriller Money Monster, which was directed by Jodie Foster and stars George Clooney and Julia Roberts, had a modest debut with $15 million domestically, $19.7 million worldwide, and good (but not great) reviews. On the flip side, horror film The Darkness — which stars Kevin Bacon and Radha Mitchell — earned just $5.2 million for its opening weekend and relatively poor reviews. Both films were made relatively cheaply, but only one of them seems poised for a decent run.
It’s worth noting that Disney’s animated feature Zootopia isn’t showing any signs of dropping out of theaters any time soon. The critically praised film earned another $2.8 million over the weekend — making it the sixth highest-grossing film of the week — and brought its worldwide gross to more than $969.8 million over 11 weeks. This year is shaping up to be a huge one for Disney across all of its various franchises and standalone projects, and it will be interesting to see just how big it gets for the company.