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Kim Hollis: And Daron, it's also a fascinating coincidence that both Spider-Man and The Avengers beat Harry Potter for the opening record. For Spider-Man, it was the first Potter, and it took The Avengers to unseat the conclusion to the Potter series.

When David Mumpower and I were discussing potential results for this film in the days before opening, I said I thought it would take the opening weekend record. I did not, however, have any notion that it would become the first ever $200 million opener. I mean, for it to do that, it would have to not just beat Potter 7.2, it would have to destroy
I think there are a number of things that play into the film's massive success. The marketing, as has been mentioned, is just remarkable. Having the Easter eggs of various Avengers appearing in each other's movies was a fantastic way of building awareness and excitement. You also might be surprised to know that 40% of the audience for The Avengers was female - a huge number by nerd/fanboy standards. What they have done really well here is create a story and mythology that is appealing to all ages and all kinds of people. That's some amazing work by both Disney and Joss Whedon.

David Mumpower: In preparing for the release of The Avengers, I re-read some of our earlier comments. Something that jumped out was this from last year's Top Film Industry Stories: "In addition, the lead in to The Avengers went perfectly as both Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger are well liked titles. Marvel had a best case scenario summer." Thor and Captain America were the risky prospects as the comic book company established their reputation as a premiere movie producer. Iron Man was already defined in such a manner and yet what Daron pointed out above is why we are collectively stunned by this turn of events.

None of the titles released prior to The Avengers hinted at such an epic box office performance. Iron Man 2's majestic $128.1 million debut was still $23 million short of Spider-Man 3, over $40 million short of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. What we discovered this weekend is the deluxe version of Aliens vs. Predator and Freddy vs. Jason. Unifying established protagonists in the same movie fundamentally changes the scale of a project. There are no words to describe what happened this weekend, because it is singularly unprecedented. The Avengers broke the standing box office record by 22%. This is the baseball equivalent of a hitter having a 100 homerun season. And yes, the analogy holds since 3D and IMAX are the theatrical ticket sales answer to steroids.

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