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Bruce Hall: Um....wow. It's true that this was projected for a huge opening, but this is incredible. I also think it's a good thing The Avengers made everyone forget how bad Iron Man 2 was. Iron Man 3 figures to lay waste to the box office until Man of Steel opens, and even then it'll be interesting to see where it ranks among the other new releases that weekend.

It looks like those rumors of superhero fatigue can be put to rest for a little while longer.

Edwin Davies: I said last week that I was expecting something in the $170-190 million range, so this is towards the lower end of my expectations. This just goes to show how skewed things have come where Marvel properties are concerned post-Avengers: the second-biggest opening weekend of all time still feels like something that could have been improved upon. It's like they didn't even try!

Seriously, though, this is amazing, and nicely illustrates what David was talking about last week when he said that The Avengers leveled-up each of its constituent members. Even if Shane Black delivered the same, thoroughly entertaining movie, it would still probably have performed much worse than this if it came out after Iron Man 2. This opening demonstrates yet again what a great job Marvel has done guiding their properties, hiring the right people to make these films, and allowing them to inform and influence each other. The uptick in foreign box office suggested that this was the case - Iron Man 3 bested the foreign totals of both its predecessors before the weekend had even begun, and with the last three days it had been able to overtake their global totals, too. And we're only 10 days in!

This is the sort of turbo-charged film-to-film increase that you just don't see. It's pretty much guaranteed to make $1 billion worldwide, has a decent shot at $400 million domestically, if not more, and will probably earn as much as Iron Man 1 and 2 combined worldwide when everything is said and done. This is just astonishing stuff.

Shalimar Sahota: That opening weekend is $20 million more than I expected. With the top two openers of all-time, Disney's Marvel properties have just trounced Harry Potter and Batman. While there are some big blockbusters on the way, I just don't see any other film released over the summer reaching this high an opening. The worldwide gross is on a different level - I find it amazing that Iron Man 3 has already managed to become the highest grossing film of the year after just ten days. Following Man of Steel, I imagine Warner will be trying their hardest to finally get a Justice League movie on track.

Tim Briody: That this beat the typical mutliplier we see for this sort of film (and also came in at pretty much what The Avengers did), became the second biggest opening of all time and improved over Iron Man 2 by 37% (the most surprising part of this, really) is showing that everything we thought we know can still end up wrong, even after following box office data for over a decade. This performance arguably is actually more impressive than The Avengers opening, which we knew would be big because it just threw everybody into one movie.

David Mumpower: I echo Edwin's belief that the domestic opening weekend performance is right in line with my expectations, maybe a few million higher. The global total is what causes my mouth to hit the floor. Seven days ago, I indicated that Iron Man 3 had a chance to join the billion dollar movie club. Only a week later, that outcome is a slam dunk. Depending on frontloading, which is still an evolving phenomenon overseas, the overall global take of The Avengers could be in play. I cannot believe I am even typing that. As we have chronicled on the site the past few days, the previous best total for an Iron Man (only) film had been $623.6 million. The combined global total of the first two franchise titles, $1.2 billion, could be matched by Iron Man 3. I hearken back to the scalding pace of The Dark Knight during the summer of 2008. Iron Man 3 has accomplished the same feat, only on a global scale. Factoring in toy sales, Disney is already in the black on their Marvel purchase after less than four years. This entire turn of events boggles the mind.

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