Saturday update:
Superhero film "Captain America: The First Avenger" got off to a solid start at the domestic box office Friday, grossing $25.6 million, according to one rival-studio estimate.
The first-day total put the $140 million Marvel film on pace to meet opening-weekend projections of over $60 million. The PG-13-rated movie, which stars Chris Evans and was directed by Joe Johnston, opened in 3,715 locations in the U.S. and Canada, most showing it in 3D.
One other film opening widely this weekend, Sony R-rated romantic comedy "Friends With Benefits," grossed $6.8 million Friday. That put it off the pace to meet pre-release projections of just over $20 million.
Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis star in the $34 million comedy, which was directed by "Easy A's" Will Gluck.
Meanwhile, coming off the biggest opening ever, Warner's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2" dropped 91 percent week-to-week to $14.6 million
Thursday preview:
Closing out the Summer of the Lesser-Known Super Hero, Paramount and Marvel will debut "Captain America: The First Avenger" in 3,715 theaters this weekend.
Tracking is solid for the Joe Johnston-directed 3D film, which stars Chris Evans in the title role and arrives with a reasonable-for-its-genre production budget of around $140 million.
Paramount officials are expecting a first-weekend gross somewhere between $55 million to $65 million -- roughly somewhere between where Fox's "X-Men: United" opened in early June ($55.1 million) and where the last Marvel/Paramount collaboration, "Thor," started in May ($65.7 million).
Opening wide alongside "Captain America," Sony rom-com "Friends With Benefits" will further ponder the age-old "can sex friends stay best friends" conundrum, with box-office watchers projecting an opening around $20 million. The R-rated comedy was directed by Will Gluck ("Easy A"), stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, and cost around $34 million to produce.
Limited debuts this weekend will include Mike Cahill's Sundance hit "Another Earth," which Fox Searchlight will open in four locations.
Oh, and there's also a holdover that's coming off the biggest domestic, foreign and global starts in cinematic history: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," which should decline steeply from its humungous $169.2 million North American premiere last weekend.
"Certainly, there's competition when you come into a marketplace that already has a movie that has set two or three records," noted Don Harris, general manager of distribution for Paramount.
Huge Potter openings, however, are usually followed by weekend-to-weekend drops in the 60 percent-plus range, with the franchise's rabid fans rushing out to see the movie during the first weekend.
With that in mind, "Captain America" -- which comes in with a decent 71 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, as of mid-day Thursday -- should win the weekend.
