Disney’s “Captain Marvel” rode a wave of enthusiasm for more diverse superheroes, a hunger for blockbusters at a quiet time of year and a large helping of ‘90s nostalgia to sell $153 million in tickets in U.S. theaters over the weekend.
It was easily the best stateside debut weekend of any movie this year as it breezily outperformed expectations and brought the domestic box office a much-needed boost.
The Brie Larson-led movie’s opening weekend was the seventh best of any in the 21-film Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise, behind the $174 million brought in by “Iron Man 3” and just ahead of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” which made $147 million during its first weekend. (Topping that list: “Avengers: Infinity War,” which took in $257.7 million when it debuted.)
“Captain Marvel” is the first film in the franchise dedicated to the story of a female superhero. DC-Warner Bros. and their Gal Gadot-led “Wonder Woman” broke a comic book glass ceiling in 2017, but “Captain Marvel” had an even stronger opening, bringing in more than $50 million more than “Wonder Woman,” which sold around $100.5 million in tickets during its opening weekend.
An origin story whose soundtrack trades in the likes of Salt-N-Pepa and Nirvana, “Captain Marvel” is set principally in 1990s California, where Larson’s hero crash-lands and eventually teams up with Nicholas Fury, a government agent familiar to Marvel fans and here played by a younger-looking, digitally rejuvenated Samuel L. Jackson. Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Annette Bening and Lashana Lynch play other major roles.
Moviegoers who didn’t see “Captain Marvel” this weekend mostly picked between two other films. Universal’s “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,” now in its third weekend, brought in about $14.7 million. And Lionsgate’s “A Madea Family Funeral,” the swan song of Tyler Perry’s long-running title character, sold $12.1 million in tickets according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Other than “Captain Marvel,” there were no first-week movies in the top 10.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.