Comic-Con and Captain America may just be the perfect couple.
As geekdom reigned in San Diego, the summer's latest superhero movie reigned at the weekend box office.
And over Harry Potter.
Captain America grossed an estimated $65.8 million, making a rout out of what might have been a run for first place.
The otherwise-huge Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 fell hard to second, with $48.1 million, down a whopping 72 percent from last weekend's historic performance.
"Harry Potter fans saw the film last weekend, and a massive drop off is not a surprise," Exhibitor Relations box-office analyst Karie Bible said today via email.
Deathly Hallows Part 2 joins Half-Blood Prince, Order of the Phoenix and Chamber of Secrets in the club of Harry Potter movies that lost their No. 1 rankings after their debut weekends. (Chamber of Secrets went on to regain the top spot in its third weekend.)
This really is no time, however, for Captain America to think its star-spangled-ness is superior to Harry Potter's British accent.
Thanks to Deathly Hallows Part 2's gigantic start—it's at about $275 million domestically, and $725 million worldwide—the Harry Potter franchise is now the world's No. 1-grossing movie franchise of all-time, surpassing no less than the Star Wars series.
Captain America, meanwhile, is the biggest superhero opener of this superhero summer, finishing just ahead of Thor, and making Green Lantern feel more left behind than ever.
Elsewhere, Justin Timberlake's and Mila Kunis' Friends With Benefits did what it could against two heavyweights. Still, it's got to sting that the well-reviewed romantic comedy ended up opening slightly smaller than the similiarly themed (but more poorly reviewed) No Strings Attached.
Tom Hanks' and Julia Roberts' Larry Crowne dropped out of the Top 10 after puttering around for three weekends. Its worldwide gross stands at about $43 million, per Box Office Mojo, a not-bad total for a movie that reputedly cost $30 million.
Super 8 also exited the Top 10 after a nifty, if not splashy, seven-weekend run. To date, the $50 million J.J. Abrams flick has taken in nearly $180 million worldwide.
Here's a complete look at the weekend's top-grossing films, per Friday-Sunday estimates as compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- Captain America: The First Avenger, $65.8 million
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, $48.1 million
- Friends With Benefits, $18.5 million
- Transformers: Dark of the Moon, $12 million
- Horrible Bosses, $11.7 million
- Zookeeper, $8.7 million
- Cars 2, $5.7 million
- Winnie the Pooh, $5.1 million
- Bad Teacher, $2.6 million
- Midnight in Paris, $1.9 million