LOS ANGELES — Sorry, Harry. “The Avengers” have crushed you.
In a strong start to Hollywood’s summer movie season the superhero team in “Marvel’s The Avengers” took in about $200.3 million at North American theaters over the weekend, according to Walt Disney Studios, which released the film. That No. 1 result easily smashed what the movie industry considers the record, set last summer by “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” for the biggest opening weekend of all time. Its total was $169.2 million if you don’t account for inflation, or about $172 million if you do.
“The Avengers” — about a star squad of Marvel superheroes, including Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Captain America and Black Widow — is now on track to take in over $1 billion at the global box office, analysts estimate. This 3-D picture, directed by Joss Whedon (until now best known for creating “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), has already sold about $441.5 million in tickets overseas and has yet to open in important markets like Japan.
“I’m running low on double takes,” Dave Hollis, executive vice president for distribution at Disney, said on Sunday morning. “As the numbers came in, we kept thinking, ‘Can these numbers possibly be right?’ ”
Marvel Studios, a division of the Walt Disney Company, spent about $220 million to make the film and at least another $100 million on global marketing. The film played at 4,349 locations in North America, and 52 percent of its domestic ticket sales came from 3-D showings, which cost $3 to $5 more than standard screenings. About 60 percent of the audience was male, Mr. Hollis said.
“Euphoric” was the only way to describe theater chains, some of which reported that their ticket-selling systems became overwhelmed with demand. “Imax had one big issue: We ran out of seats to sell,” Greg Foster, president of Imax Filmed Entertainment, the programming division of the large-format film company, wrote in an e-mail on Sunday morning.
No other movie came close to “The Avengers” over the weekend. “Think Like a Man” (Sony) was second, taking in about $8 million for a three-week total of $73 million, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles box-office data. “The Hunger Games” (Lionsgate) took in about $5.7 million in third place, lifting its seven-week total to $380.7 million.
“The Lucky One” (Warner Brothers) was fourth, taking in $5.5 million for a three-week total of $47.9 million, and “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” (Sony) was fifth, selling about $5.4 million in tickets for a two-week total of $18.6 million.
Several factors contributed to the enormous audience interest in “The Avengers,” starting with its quality. The movie, stuffed to the brim with special effects, has been popular with most critics, with the review-aggregation site RottenTomatoes.com rating it at 94 percent on the “fresh” scale. Audiences in exit polls gave the film a rare A-plus score, an indication that word-of-mouth was strong. The Hulk, played this time by Mark Ruffalo, has received particularly high marks.
“People come to the movies to see giant spectacles, but what really makes the difference is over-delivering on expectations,” said Kevin Feige, a producer of “The Avengers” and president of Marvel Studios. “Maybe it’s delivering a movie that is funnier than people expected or one that moves them a little bit more than they expected. Joss has accomplished that.”
Marvel also expertly orchestrated one of the longest marketing teases in Hollywood history. The studio planted the seeds for an all-star “Avengers” movie in 2008 with the release of “Iron Man,” played by Robert Downey Jr. Then a thunder god with a magic hammer, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), got his own movie, followed by Captain America (Chris Evans). Iron Man arrived with a sequel. All were worldwide hits.
This strategy, largely devised by Mr. Feige and mirroring how Marvel historically approached the publication of its comics, carried enormous risk. If even one of those prior films had flopped, “The Avengers” — envisioned as a multifilm series — would have been thrown into question.
More Marvel is on the way. Sony will release “The Amazing Spider-Man” in July. (Sony holds those rights in a long-standing deal that predates Disney’s purchase of Marvel.)“Iron Man 3” is scheduled for next May, with “Thor 2” following in November of next year. A sequel to “Captain America: The First Avenger” is planned for April 2014.
The turnout for “The Avengers” is being called a record by the movie industry even though independently verified box-office data is available going back only about 30 years. That means inflation cannot be taken into account when measuring the success of old blockbusters like “Gone With the Wind.”
Still, it marks an important win for Disney, which has struggled mightily at the box office in recent months. The studio’s last major release was “John Carter,” a failed science-fiction epic that prompted Disney to take a $200 million write-down. The company fired its movie chairman last month and has not yet announced a successor.
Hollywood will now try to keep the “Avengers” momentum going by releasing blockbusters every weekend until Labor Day, a season that typically accounts for 40 percent of the industry’s annual ticket sales. It’s a summer stuffed with promising new entries, like “Snow White and the Huntsman,” and franchises: the return of Will Smith in “Men in Black III,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Ice Age: Continental Drift.”
One window for armchair box-office analysts to watch in particular is Aug. 3, when two major releases will go after the same audience: “The Bourne Legacy,” the first film in that series without Matt Damon, and “Total Recall.”
The movie industry is trying hard to reverse four consecutive summers of declining attendance. Ticket sales for the summer period last year totaled $4.38 billion; attendance was about 543 million, the lowest tally since 1997. This year has been strong so far, with ticket sales up 16 percent to $3.6 billion and attendance up 18 percent.
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