Box Office: ‘Captain Marvel’ Has Strong Opening, but Not in Top Five Marvel Films

Marvel’s Captain Marvel flew in for a very strong estimated box office debut of around $153 million for its opening weekend, but if projections are met, it will be only the seventh biggest Marvel superhero movie.

The CG-fueled origin story starring Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson pulled in $61.4 million on its opening day, but if its estimated earnings grow along expected lines, its full run will rank seventh behind three Avengers installments, Black Panther, Iron Man 3, and Captain America: Civil War, according to Variety.

The movie that Marvel hopes will form a bridge between its first decade of superhero films and its next leg of the Marvel universe has already earned nearly $130 million overseas.

The film also made for some interesting gender splits. According to Box Office Mojo, for all the hype of the film being a “feminist” movie, female viewers amounted to 45 percent of the weekend audience. Wonder Woman, on the other hand, racked up a 52 percent female audience. Captain Marvel’s audience also skewed a tad older with its attendees fitting into the 25 and older audience metric, giving the flick a bit older audience than most other Marvel films.

Notably, Captain Marvel did not have any new releases to run against it. Indeed, the rest of the top five all debuted last month.

As for the rest of the top five movies for the weekend, Universal’s How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World thundered in at second place with a take of around $14.7 million for its third weekend in release. The film has earned over $435 million worldwide since last month’s debut.

In its second weekend, Tyler Perry’s Madea swan song, A Madea Family Funeral, dug up an additional $12.05 million but dropped 55 percent in audience rates for a third-place finish this weekend.

In fourth is WB’s The LEGO Movie 2 locking up another $3.8 million to bring its five-week total to $164.4 million worldwide.

And battling for fourth place is Fox’s Alita: Battle Angel which fell 56 percent in audience rates to earn $3.2 million this weekend, and brought its world total to $382.6 million.

The next big release to watch will be WB’s Shazam! which has very good buzz and will open on April 5.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.