You might think that Marvel’s Captain America films wouldn’t perform very well beyond the borders of the US-of-A (what with the whole emphasis on “America” and all), but you’d be wrong.
In fact, you wouldn’t just be wrong — you’d be very, very wrong.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Captain America: Civil War exploded out of the gates this past weekend, hauling in $200.2 million at the foreign box office. The film’s overseas release came one week before its domestic debut, and the massive ticket sales it has already posted must have folks over at Marvel feeling pretty bullish.
The film’s $200.2 million foreign take is good enough for the fourteenth-best overseas opening weekend of all time, and puts the film in truly elite company. Couple that with a 94-percent positive score from critics on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and Captain America: Civil War seems poised to be a massive hit.
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The newest entry in Marvel’s stable of films nabbed 63 percent of the worldwide box office this past weekend and bested previous releases like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Spider-Man 3 to become the highest-grossing debut of all time in Mexico ($20.6 million), Brazil ($12.3 million), and the Philippines ($7.5 million).
Ironically, its historic $200 million opening puts it well behind another superhero battle royale: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. That film opened to the tune of $256.5 million, but was held back domestically by negative press and poor reviews (27 percent on Rotten Tomatoes).
While the main critique of Batman v Superman seemed to be that it just wasn’t fun enough, the early returns seem to suggest that Captain America: Civil War won’t have that problem. We’ll have to wait until May 6, 2016 to find out for sure, but it seems like Marvel has another winner on its hands. The winner of the titular Civil War, on the other hand, is still TBD.
Stay tuned.
