Age of Ultron Scores 2nd Biggest Weekend Box Office

Avengers: Age of Ultron scored the second biggest North American opening in history this weekend. The comic book film's opening weekend pulled in $187.8 million, the second biggest in box office history. The Avengers first with $207.4 million, Avengers: Age of Ultron second with $187.8 million, and Iron Man 3 with $174.1 million.

"It would be a shame to see headlines saying 'Avengers 2' fails by not setting opening weekend records," said Phil Contrino, vice president and chief analyst at BoxOffice.com. "This is still a massive debut, but there's something about the movie industry where people feel every weekend should set a new record."

The film is pulling in an estimated $627 million in 12 days of release. Globally around $18 million of Avengers opening weekend collection is came from 364 Imax screens. The studio has also set the dates for the third film in the Avengers series, Avengers: Infinity War, which will be broken into two parts in 2018 and 2019. Marvel's parent company, Disney, has a big slate of box office favorites planned for the rest of 2015, which includes the return of Pixar with the animated "Inside Out" in June and another Marvel film "Ant Man" in July.