Even before Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 debuted here in North America, the first film in Marvel Studios’ post-Avengers "Phase 2" had already earned $300 million overseas.  When the dust cleared on Sunday, the third Iron Man film had posted the second best debut in Hollywood movie history as it brought in $175.3 million over the 3-day weekend, a total that trails only The Avengers’ massive $207.4 million debut in 2012.  IM3 accounted for 83% of the total of the top 12 films at the box office, but that total was down 15% from the same weekend last year when The Avengers posted its prodigious debut.
 
IM3, which actually grossed slightly more this weekend ($175.9 million) overseas, is in fact performing more like a sequel to The Avengers than to  Iron Man 2.  Black’s film has already surpassed the final worldwide total of Iron Man 2 ($623.9 million) with an amazing worldwide total of $680.1 million, and appears to be assured of becoming a member of the rather exclusive "billion-dollar club."
 
Domestically IM3 opened with a massive $41,216 per-venue average.  3-D showings accounted for 45% of all tickets sold here in North America, and IMAX theaters accounted for $16.5 million of weekend sales.  Analysts are already predicting that IM3 will earn over $400 million domestically and take home this year’s box office crown, though the film will face considerable competition for its core action-movie audience with the debut of Star Trek Into Darkness on May 15th and Fast and Furious 6 on May 24th.

Iron Man 3 also cements Iron Man’s position as the number one stand-alone Marvel Studios property.  Among the Phase 1 Marvel Studios’ films, only The Avengers and the first two Iron Man movies managed to earn over $200 million domestically ($318.4 million, and $312.4 million respectively).  With IM3 off to such a prodigious start, it is clearer than ever that the Iron Man property, which Marvel Studios rescued from Paramount after the venerable Hollywood studio balked at proceeding with an expensive Iron Man film, is the largest and shiniest gem in Marvel Studios’ crown.  Like Batman, DC Comics’ most popular screen hero, Iron Man is a "relatable" character with no superpowers.
 
Though the highbrow critics (N.Y. Times, New Yorker, Christian Science Monitor, etc.) have apparently come down with a bad case of superhero fatigue, Iron Man 3, with its mixture of sardonic quips, digitally-rendered action set pieces, and occasional surprisingly intimate moments, still managed a very solid 78% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and opening weekend audiences gave the film a solid "A" CinemaScore, which indicates that the film still has solid box office prospects in the weeks ahead. 

As might be expected from both the demographics at previous comic book movies (and at comic book shops for that matter) the audience for IM3 was predominantly male (61%) and older (55% over 25), though the film did have considerable appeal to couples, which made up 52% of the audience, while teens accounted for 21% and families for 27%.
 
Marvel’s strategy of crafting the film for the Asian market has indeed paid dividends as IM3 scored the biggest opening of all time in Southeast Asia, and debuted with $63.5 million in China, where there were fears that the government would attempt to sabotage the opening of IM3 by debuting an expected domestic smash (the film Young Love, which is based on a popular novel) on the same day.  Last year the Chinese government deliberately contrived to have The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises open on the same day, which definitely hurt the grosses of both films.  But this time the government relented and allowed Young Love to open a week earlier.  Marvel also produced a special China-only version of Iron Man 3, which includes extra scenes shot in Beijing as well as an appearance by the popular actress Fan Bingbing, who is also set to appear in X-Men: Days of Future Past (which is due in 2014, see "Daniel Cudmore Joins 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'"). 

It is really a little bit early to make predictions about the Chinese market, but it does appear that contemporary Chinese moviegoers are not going to go for just any mindless, "blow-up everything in sight" 3-D summer blockbuster, so the extra care that Marvel put into the preparation of IM3 certainly appears to have been a prudent strategy.  The fact that the Wachowskis’ enigmatic epic Cloud Atlas, which earned just $27 million here in 2012, outperformed many of the big budget studio tentpoles in the China last year, demonstrates that the studios still have much to learn about how to market films in the world’s most populous country.
 
With Iron Man 3 accounting for 83% of all the tickets sold, most of the other films in release took it on the chin, particularly those that appealed to the action movie audience.  Last week’s winner, Michael Bay’s Pain and Gain fell 62.5%, while the Tom Cruise-starring science fiction film Oblivion plummeted 67.4% in its third weekend.  The exceptions to the general demise were the sports biopic 42, which remained at #3 in its fourth weekend as it declined just 41.7%, and Dreamworks’ animated The Croods, which spent its 7th week of release at #5 as it declined just 37.2%.
 
Check back next week to see how Iron Man 3 holds up (it will likely be the #1 film of 2013 before the weekend is over) and how a handful of new films including Baz Luhrman’s over-the-top adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Tyler Perry Presents Peeples fare as they open in the shadow of IM3.