GODZILLA (Warners/Legendary) is more or less the definition of a movie that should have a great first night, and indeed it did on Thursday, pulling in $9.3M in shows that started at 7PM. That’s more than the $8.7M for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and not far off the pace of Captain America: The Winter Soldier‘s $10.2M. Notably, $2.1M of Godzilla‘s total came from IMAX screens alone–almost double Captain America 2‘s $1.2M Thursday night IMAX total–which suggests the strong “fanboy” enthusiasm for the movie.
In theory, its Thursday night puts Godzilla into position for the same kind of $90M+ weekend that Spider-Man 2 and Captain America 2 had. The big monster may be more front-loaded, though–that remains to be seen. To the relief of Warners and Legendary, however, last night’s start swamped the $3.6M Thursday night of last summer’s Pacific Rim, their previous attempt at a mega-budgeted Asian monster spectacle, and its opening weekend will be far higher than Pacific Rim‘s soft $37.3M start.
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About the Author
Mitch Salem
MITCH SALEM has worked on the business side of the entertainment industry for 20 years, as a senior business affairs executive and attorney for such companies as NBC, ABC, USA, Syfy, Bravo, and BermanBraun Productions, and before that, at the NY law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. During all that, he has more or less constantly been going to the movies and watching TV, and writing about both since the 1980s. His film reviews also currently appear on screened.com and the-burg.com. In addition, he is co-writer of an episode of the television series "Felicity."
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