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.
Other new releases last week included Carol Morley’s The Falling, which took £144,370 from 57 sites, and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, which made £34,362 from 18 sites. A less healthy site average of £479 was recorded for Reese Witherspoon drama The Good Lie.
