Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger earned $4 million as it debuted in 2,000 theaters at midnight. This compares very favorably with this summer’s other three superhero films. X-Men: First Class, which brought in $3.4 million in its midnight debut, while Green Lantern took in $3.35 million, and Thor earned $3.25 million. Of course none of these totals comes any where near the Harry Potter finale, which collected an amazing $43.5 million at its midnight shows—and Cap has to face off against the final Potter film, which will be in just its second weekend when the final superhero film of the summer debuts.
The Potter film earned so much during its first weekend that it could plunge by 65% and still earn $59 million, a total that might be very difficult for Captain America to top. Paramount is predicting that Cap will open somewhere between X-Men: First Class’ $55 million and Thor’s $65.7 million. To win the weekend it might have to finish closer to Thor. Thor had the advantage of debuting in early May with much less competition for screens. Cap will open on about 6,700 screens with just 2,500 showing the film in 3-D.
While Cap’s midnight showing is very encouraging, this weekend’s box office derby, which appears to be one of the most exciting of the summer, appears to be too close to call. It is even conceivable that Captain America could be the only superhero film of the summer to not top the box office, yet with the help of good word of mouth (the film has earned a solid 70% positive rating from the critics surveyed by review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes), it might also turn out to the highest-grossing of all four superhero movies domestically when all is said and done.
