We expected Avengers: Infinity War to break records in its first weekend, but it still managed to over-perform. Marvel Studios moved up their nineteenth movie so that it could launch worldwide this past weekend. The move was to prevent spoilers (and there are plenty in Infinity War), but it also gave Marvel the opportunity to earn a massive amount of money in a very short amount of time. Early projections for the film assured it would gross at least $200 million during its U.S. opening weekend, and those estimates only grew higher as the movie's premiere date drew closer.

Infinity War had already set multiple new records before its opening weekend was even done. It recorded Marvel Studios' best Thursday night and the best Saturday of all-time, before early estimates had Infinity War beating the previous opening weekend record set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens a few years ago. However, it turns out the actual figures are even higher than those estimates.

Official box office numbers for Avengers: Infinity War arrived this morning courtesy of Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru. The figures confirm that Infinity War broke multiple records this weekend, but set the bar even higher for future films. Infinity War officially opened with $258.2M domestically and took in $640.9M worldwide over that same frame. Both of these are record-setting figures and give Infinity War a great start to its potentially historic box office run.

A massive opening such as this is exactly what Marvel was hoping to get out of their biggest movie yet. The higher total comes thanks to a record setting Sunday as well. The Force Awakens previously held that record too at $60.5M and Infinity War blew past that with $69.2M. The dip between Saturday and Sunday is incredibly small and thanks to the lack of competition that surrounds this movie, there's a great opportunity for Infinity War to continue grossing almost all the money at the box office.

The biggest challenger for Infinity War will be Deadpool 2, but Ryan Reynolds' sequel doesn't come out until its fourth weekend. There's no doubt that Infinity War will be the film audiences continue to flock to due to the lack of other movies, but also thanks to the positive word of mouth and event status the film has achieved. It is already approaching $1 billion and could have that locked up by this time next week, and do so without China. The movie doesn't launch there until May 11th, so how big it becomes over there will be a major factor in determining just how big Avengers: Infinity War ends up becoming overall. Thanks to this start though, it's already secured a few records.

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Source: Gitesh Pandya

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