Avengers: Age of Ultron beats Fifty Shades for best UK opening since Skyfall
Ensemble blockbuster earns £18m on first weekend smashing records for April openings, Saturday takes, superhero movies and single-day Disney revenues
The latest Marvel superhero blockbuster, Avengers: Age of Ultron, left a trail of devastation in its wake at the UK box office this weekend, with records smashed and previous chart-topper Fast & Furious left eating dust.
The film took £18m from 585 sites, which makes it the biggest opening of 2015, the eight biggest of all time, the biggest April opening ever, the biggest ever day for a superhero movie and Disney’s own best-ever day.
It beat the previous Avengers movie’s opening of £15.87m – as well as that of Fifty Shades of Grey (£13.55m), recorded in February. The film’s debut in the UK is therefore the highest since Skyfall (£20.18m) at the end of 2012. Spectre, Sam Mendes’s James Bond followup, as well as the new Star Wars movie, will be among those titles hoping to top the £20m mark later in the year.
Fast & Furious is still making good progress in the UK, however – it’s currently taken nearly £35m; meanwhile, the animation Home’s cumulative total now stands at £21m.
