Avengers: Age of Ultron KO'd By Mayweather-Pacquiao Fight

The Avengers may have huge box office appeal but it seems the combined talents of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and Hulk are no match compared to the allure of Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao.

Disney’s star-studded sequel ’Avengers: Age of Ultron’ made its US debut on 1 May and despite predictions that it would break box office records, it failed to beat the opening weekend record set by its predecessor ‘The Avengers’ in 2012.

Industry insiders are pointing the finger of blame at the much-anticipated Mayweather/Pacquiao fight which took place on Saturday night (Sunday morning UK time) drawing audiences away from the multiplexes.

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'Age of Ultron’ still managed to have the second best opening weekend in American cinema history taking $187.7m (£124m) over three days but an anonymous studio exec told The Hollywood Reporter: “The fight dinged all films across the board. The numbers on Ultron are still phenomenal but definitely less than they would have been.”

The trade mag went on: “As the weekend wore on, it became apparent that Saturday night’s Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao fight was hurting Ultron in a big way.”

Moviegoing audiences on Saturday night reportedly fell by as much as 50% in cities across the States with 'Age of Ultron’s predominantly adult male demographic preferring to watch the huge pay-per-view fight over the fictional dust-up between Ultron and the Avengers.

According to research reported in Variety, the cost of the PPV event also had a direct impact on the box office takings of Joss Whedon’s sequel. “13% said after shelling out $100 for the boxing match there wasn’t enough money left over to buy tickets to ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’,” noted polling research from industry experts C4-R&D.

This meant that the sequel fell short of the $207.4m (£137m) raked in by the first Avengers film by around 9%.

The film is still expected to be a huge earner for Marvel and its global box office haul of $631m (£417m) over 12 days is already bigger than the lifetime takings for 'Captain America: The First Avenger’ ($371m), 'Thor’ ($449m), 'Iron Man’ ($583m), and 'Iron Man 2’ ($622m).

‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ is in cinemas now.

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Image credits: Press Association/Disney