Iron Man 2 ready for box office records

Iron Man 2 blasts onto 4380 theaters this weekend in what is the largest wide opening ever. This is the only movie opening wide (who would have the guts to take on this two thousand pound gorilla anyway) and the expectations are way out there.

After opening to over $100 million from 53 markets around the world last weekend, experts are joggling figures that go as high as The Dark Knight‘s record opening weekend from 2 years ago, $158.4 million. I personally have my expectations a little lower, about $25-$30 million less to be more exact. I wish it would score more then $140 million but as it is I don’t see that happening. Going for a $130-$135 million opening and I hope in a few hours when the first numbers come out, I will be proven wrong and it will be higher then a certain vampire movie that managed $142.8 million little over 5 months ago, enough for the 3rd highest opening ever in North America (Spider-Man 3 is in second place with $151.1 million).

Now how higher could it go after the initial weekend, well it depends on how well people embrace this movie, and with the competition left this month, I don’t see Iron Man 2 getting a multiplier bigger then Iron Man 1. A multiplier is the total gross of a movie divided by the opening weekend. So say a movie opened with $100 million and made $300 million, that means it had a multiplier of 3. So with that number in mind, if Iron Man 2 opens with $130-$135 million, it could potentially go on to gross around $400 million or more just in North America, add to that another 350-400 from around the world and Paramount has a movie that could potentially go as high as $800 million worldwide, that’s a good $220 million more then the first one.

After seeing it over the week, I can see that while it may not be as fresh and overall great as the first one, it is still a good summer blockbuster, a fun movie that will leaving you wanting more (read Iron Man 3).

Anyway, the summer has officially started at the box office and you can expect interesting stuff happening in the next months thanks to some high profile movies that are getting ever so close to us with each passing day (I will be all over Prince of Persia when it comes out and if it sucks, well, then I guess I will have to hurt someone or something, probably an inanimate object since I’m not the violent type).