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Kim Hollis: Iron Man 3, which we described last week as a de facto sequel to The Avengers, became the second largest opening weekend of all-time with $174.1 million. It has already earned around $680 million worldwide after a paltry ten days in release. What are your thoughts on Iron Man 3?

Jay Barney: This opening is huge. The numbers against past mega openers are pretty special. Only The Avengers, another Marvel product, has ever opened larger. Twenty-three other films had huge openings north of $100 million. Iron Man 3 beat all but one of them, and the character was involved in both products. This is a mark of how intense the appeal is for this set of characters. The Harry Potters will now be moving down a peg on the all-time opening list. The Twilight films, Spiderman, Batman…there are some impressive franchises all forced to take a back seat to the new box office champ.

Going back to what David Mumpower chronicled in his Friday Box Office Analysis, the Tony Stark product has already become one of the highest earners of 2013, only three days into its run. I hadn’t realized just how depressed the box office had been this year, when one larger earner can totally outpace nearly every film on the schedule thus far. Iron Man 3 will be the highest grossing film of the year by weekend #2 and it is still going to have an impressive run in front of it. Gatsby isn’t likely to take away the core audience, and this opening is so huge, Iron Man could repeat as the number one film next weekend. Star Trek will muddy the waters, but even a crowded Memorial Day lineup will see solid sales for all films. It has had a memorable opening and it should have a strong May.

One final note on this opening weekend. The executives at Disney must be relaxed, smiling, and feeling quite happy about their investment choices for 2013. On the weekend Iron Man 3 vanquishes all of the opposition and establishes itself in the record books, Oz the Great and Powerful had a bit of a resurgence. Now in its ninth weekend of release, Oz moved up five spaces on the weekend chart, from 13th to 8th. It made more money this weekend than it did last weekend. It is close to the end of its run, but Disney will be making money off the #1 and #2 earners of the year for a few more weeks.

Matthew Huntley: Spectacular domestic opening preceded by an even more impressive global debut. We all knew this was going to open big, but just how big was whether you thought the rather poor taste Iron Man 2 left behind was going to hurt it or the overwhelmingly positive one The Avengers left was going to help it. Clearly, the latter won out in the end.

Numbers aside, this is a fully realized, self-contained movie, which doesn't necessarily rely on its brethren to succeed. The story and characters are well developed, the plot is interesting and it never stops moving. I don't say this as a fan of the (too) prolific superhero genre, but as a fan of movies in general. It is a solid film all around and I think its numbers are well deserved.

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