This weekend exactly 10 years ago, an adaptation of a Marvel comic became the very first movie to make $100 million is a single weekend. That film was Spider-man and now, a decade on, another Marvel property has become the first movie to power past $200 million in only three days in the US, smashing numerous records in the process.

The film took $200.3 million on its US release, which is by far the biggest opening ever, ahead of last year’s Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2′s $169 million. It became the fastest film to $100 million, $150 million and $200 million, took the biggest Saturday ($69.7 million) and Sunday ($50.1 milion) gross ever and had the highest per-theatre average ever for a nationwide release of $46,057.

Perhaps just as impressively its already beaten the lifetime US take of Thor, Captain America and the Incredible Hulk, and will almost certainly pass both Iron Man films by next weekend. It’s a massive vindication of Marvel’s plan to make a series of interconnected movies and will ensure we see many more movies featuring the characters in the future.

The only bad news what that The Avengers dominance meant all the other movies in the top 10 took a big hit, but cinema owners are unlikely to be complaining, and will hope this is only the beginning of a huge summer. Take a look below for the US box office top 10 for the weekend of May 4th-6th 2012.

After surprising many with its strong $30 million plus opening last week, Think Like A Man has continued its successful run at the US box office topping the chart for a second week with $18 million. It beat out quite a few new movies, none of which found a particularly big audience.

The Pirates! Band Of Misfits did best of the new entries, placing second with $11.4 million, which was about in line with expectations. And yes, it is the same film as The Pirates In An Adventure With Scientists, but got a bit of a title change as US marketing people thought the word ‘scientists’ would turn kids off.

The Five-Year Engagement landed with a bit of a thud, underperforming with only $11.1 million. Going in to the weekend, some analysts thought the Jason Segel and Emily Blunt rom-com had a chance of topping the chart, but it appear audiences weren’t interested, perhaps because there are already several other movies hoovering up the female audience at the moment.

It did however beat out the Jason Statham film Safe, which placed sixth on the chart with $7.7 million, as well as The Raven, which came seventh on the chart with $7.2 million.

Next weekend it’ll be all change as The Avengers will hit the US this week, with many expecting a $150 million plus opening weekend. The movie is already making waves outside the US, making a huge $178 million even though it only opened in around 75% of territories. In the UK, the film pulled in a rather stellar $15 million, one of the best openings ever and the best for a superhero movie.

A rather cool new poster has debuted (via Collider) for the upcoming Jason Statham action flick, Safe. The movie sees Statham as Luke Wright, a second rate cage fighter in the mixed martial arts circuit in New Jersey. When he blows a rigged fight, the Russian mafia make an example of him – murdering his wife and threatening to kill anyone he forms any kind of friendship or relationship with. Now homeless, destitute and completely isolated from society, Luke finds a shot at redemption when he meets and starts to protect Mei, a young prodigy with a perfect memory for numbers, who the triads have been using so there’s no paper trail on their dodgy dealings. The film hits cinemas in April.