Daredevil opened strong, its $43.5 million opening a record for a President's Day weekend, and the second best ever for a February opening, behind Hannibal two years ago.  While nowhere near Spider-Man's $114 million opening, this is a very strong showing for a character that has almost no name recognition aside from comic fans;  X-Men and Spider-Man had previously been exposed to a much greater degree through animation and licensing.  And since this is presumably the weakest of the three Marvel films this year, things look very good indeed for X2 and The Hulk, in May and June respectively. 

 

Retailers looking for Daredevil movie merchandise will need to move fast.  As of last week Marvel had sold out of the movie adaptation trade paperback, although Diamond still had some copies left.  Some distributors had the Daredevil movie cards from Topps in stock.  But Diamond still had stock on a significant number of Daredevil trade paperbacks available, along with a bust and a few other assorted types of non-movie Daredevil merchandise.  There's also a bunch of Dynamic Forces DD merchandise available.