Thor: The Dark World is a huge movie, and already was before it even opened in North America this weekend, having made $100 million already worldwide. And now it's officially much bigger than its first installment. The superhero sequel made $31.6 million on Friday, which according to The Hollywood Reporter puts it on track for an $80 million debut. That's well ahead of what the first Thor made when it premiered in May of 2011, and given that that film eventually made $449 million worldwide, you can easily chalk up another hit for Team Marvel.
And even though Thor: The Dark World can't quite match this summer's mega-debut for Iron Man 3 or even the November box office record held by The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, but THR dug up some stats about Thor's audience that bodes well for its long-term success. 48% of the movie's audience is female, compared to only 40% female for Iron Man 3-- proving either that you can't show Chris Hemsworth with his shirt off too often, that Tom Hiddleston's massive Tumblr fan base is even bigger than we thought, or that Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings have major power to draw in female audiences (or maybe all three!) And Thor: The Dark World is earning a A- CinemaScore, which means it won't just be people like us telling everyone to go see it. THR doesn't have info on how many of the tickets sold are in 3D, but hopefully at least a few of you are taking our advice and avoiding the 3D upsell entirely.
As for other releases, nothing new has opened wide to compete against Thor, but both 12 Years A Slave and About Time are expanding, to mixed results. 12 Years, riding high on massive awards buzz, is on track to make $6.5 million and bring its total to $17 million, while About Time will make $5 million and come in at ninth place overall. Given that one is a harrowing drama about slavery and the other is a charming romantic comedy tinged with time-travel, those spots in the box-office pecking order are a bit odd-- but that shows you what months and months of rave reviews can do.
Let us know in the comments what you're seeing this weekend, and we'll have a full box office report to you on Sunday.
