"Thor: The Dark World" drops the hammer on the competition with an $86.1 million debut

"Thor: The Dark World" drops the hammer on the competition with an $86.1 million debut

Except for the Twilight and Potter flicks, that is the second-best November opening in history, trailing only Skyfall, which grossed $88.4M on its opening weekend.

It is also the second-best debut to take place entirely in the first half of November, again behind Skyfall. All of the Potter and Vampire flicks were basically Thanksgiving releases, opening no earlier than the weekend of the 15th through 17th.

12 Years a Slave expanded satisfactorily. It took in $6.6 million, which was good enough for 7th place, and represented $5,769 per theater. That was the second-best average among the films in 50 theaters or more, bested only by the God of Thunder his ownself.

About Time also had a pretty good run in limited distro. It finished in 9th place overall with $5.2 million, and that was good enough to take third place on a per-theater basis.

The "Redford against the sea" movie took in about a million bucks in very limited distro, to finish in 12th, thus exceeding my expectations by ... oh, about a million bucks.