Pain And Gain Tops The US Box Office, With Iron Man 3 Taking A Gargantuan Haul Internationally

Michael Bay has proved he can still pull in the punters away from massive robots, as his Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg starrer, Pain And Gain, topped the US box office with $20 million in its first weekend. Although that’s a lot less than Bay’s Transformers movies opened to, that’s only to be expected from an R-rated thriller with a dash of comedy. And as it only cost $26 million to make, it’s likely headed for a healthy profit.

There was less cheer for The Big Wedding, which opened to a rather meagre $7.5 million, despite a cast including Robert De Niro, Susan Sarandon, Katherine Heigl, Diane Keaton, Robin Williams and Amanda Seyfried. While Hollywood still seems to think wedding comedies are a surefire winner, Big Wedding has followed a trend of diminishing returns for this seemingly never-ending subgenre.

Those were the only new movies in the top 10, as the Matthew McConaughey drama Mud landed at number 11 on its opening in limited release. However the really big news took place outside the US, where the international opening of Iron Man 3 took a truly massive $195 million.

The film opened in 79% of territories outside North America, and if Disney had any worries about the poster-Avengers Marvel world, they’ll have been laid to rest. $195 million is $10 million ahead of what Avengers took in those territories in its first three days. It had the biggest opening ever in Argentina, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore It’s one of the biggest international opening ever and certainly suggests the film is going to be one of this year’s biggest hitters

Take a look below for the US box office top 10 for the weekend of April 26th-28th.