The winner

No sudden hitches in the closing stages of Marvel’s Phase Two, as its mothership film – the $280m-budgeted Avengers: Age of Ultron – wafted away any lingering petrol fumes from Furious 7 and bestrode the globe. Parent studio Disney earmarked the same final April weekend as it had done for the first film in 2012, but with a more self-assured release pattern this time. The original scattered a more random selection of international territories next to the western-European cash cows in its first week, in order to the seed the then-unfamiliar superhero tag-team concept with audiences around the world. Ultron, though, calmly leads the procession out in old and new Europe and south-east Asia this week. Then Latin America and the Middle East accompany the US fanfare on May Day weekend.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The cast of Avengers: Age of Ultron

Ultron has $1.5bn (£970m) to beat if Marvel’s current upwards trajectory is to be maintained, and this frame’s $200.2m is a determined start, 44% above the first film’s tally across the same set of markets – especially considering a slightly begrudging spread of reviews (our own Peter Bradshaw excepted). South Korea’s $28.2m made it top dog, a huge 161% advance on the film’s film debut and the highest opening of all time there: a Seoul-set interlude and local actor Kim Syoo-hun as one of Tony Stark’s techies ramping up interest. And Ultron was notching up lesser precedents elsewhere to suggest that Marvel’s cross-fertilisation strategy, spotlighting its caped alumni individually and then bringing them together, is still working: biggest superhero and best 2015 opening in the UK ($27.3m); biggest ever opening in Russia ($16.2m – just ahead of Furious 7), best 2015 opening in France ($12.4m). Next week’s surge into Latin America should give a better idea how much the Avengers have gained ground in emerging markets, usually responsible for pushing a sequel ahead of its predecessor. Beating the first film’s all-time record US opening ($207.4m) would help, of course. But I suspect that’s where real life might not live up to the movies, where effortlessly upping the ante is Marvel’s calling card.

Avengers: Age of Ultron review – Joss Whedon's exhilarating cavalcade of fun Read more

Still trucking

Some more stickers for Furious 7’s rear windshield: it has now taken $1bn in overseas box office alone, and is only the third film, after Titanic and Avatar, to do so. The fifth most successful film of all time at the start of the week, it’s probably crossing into the fourth spot as you read this (commiserations, Deathly Hallows Part 2). Furious 7 now tracks 75.7% international – far higher than the rest of the series, and the explosion of interest in China has been crucial to that. It overtook Transformers: Age of Extinction ($320m) this week to claim the country’s most-successful accolade. What has gone largely unnoticed is that the Chinese gross ($323m) has now passed the US ($320.5m). Given that Furious 7’s American audience is falling off, and that Age of Ultron has another fortnight before it opens in China, Furious 7 looks nailed on to join that most elite and early-adopter of clubs: Hollywood films that did better in China. Currently, membership stands at Pacific Rim, Age of Extinction, Expendables 3 and, if you’re really not being choosy, the 3D version of Titanic. Furious 7 has breezed in because, as well as the reasons it stormed the barricades elsewhere, Universal’s new China office threw everything it had at one of the widest releases (90,000 screenings a day) the country has seen yet.

If the shoe fits

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kenneth Branagh on Cinderella

Japan is Hollywood’s wild card – difficult to fathom, but with big rewards on the table if you manage a hit in the world’s third largest movie market. Foreign action extravaganzas often fall flat (there hasn’t been one in the yearly top 10 since the first Avengers), but animation, family films and quirky premises often get gobbled up. Disney has bottled what seems to be as close as you get to a sure thing there, with its Princess diffusion line giving it Japan’s No 1 and No 3 films for 2014 in the form of Frozen and Maleficent. So much was expected of Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella remake, opening typically as the last stop of a Hollywood rollout (another sign of the studios’ circumspection when dealing with Japan). A $4.8m No 1 is the best US opening of the year there, counted over two days (Furious 7’s three-day take surpassed it last weekend), and the third best overall among all of Cinderella’s territories (behind China and the UK). The Japanese trailer, putting fetishistic focus on the glass slipper encasing Lily James’s tootsies, pushes the kawaii buttons beloved of the local culture, with the ice-blue Swarovski creation also subtly working in Frozen associations. Disney won’t be expecting a similar $200-plus return on Cinderella, and even Maleficent’s $63m is unrealistic without an Angelina Jolie. But $30-40m could be on the cards, all the more impressive with strong local competition from a new Dragonball Z film currently in play, too. Heading in the opposite direction, and due for release in multiple markets later this year, the anime is a rarity for the 21st-century Japanese industry: a film with ambitions to go abroad.

Gross in the machine

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ex-Machina: watch the trailer

Alex Garland’s artificial-intelligence thriller Ex Machina expanded to more than 1,200 theatres in the US this weekend, its $5.3m take edging it into breakout territory, with the 24-35 demographic especially keen. Curiously, Universal – which co-funded the Film4 gig and are distributing internationally – chose not to handle it in the States, where up-and-coming outfit A24 took the reins (it gave Spring Breakers a similarly zeitgeisty jolt in 2012). With Ex Machina having also banked $7.7m abroad for a $14.5m total gross, not to mention general acclaim, it’s becoming a notable entry in the indie sci-fi canon. But ideas-rich, SFX-shy science fiction often entrances fanboys and critics, then struggles to entice the mainstream enough to break even. The budget point is crucial, and Ex Machina’s ($16.4m) is in the danger zone: not in the ultra-low bracket that can make a sharply executed future vision ultra-profitable, as in the case of Shane Carruth’s Primer (which took $424,000 off a $7,000 outlay in 2004), or Another Earth ($1.8m off $100,000) in 2011. Nor is it in the $30m-plus range where marketing begins to snag mass audiences. Being exposed somewhere in between was what did for Under the Skin ($5.3m worldwide for a $13.1m budget) and Attack the Block ($5.8m worldwide from $13m). Ex Machina could still power on through, with more theatres due once the Ultron hullabaloo dies down, and more international openings, too, including France on 3 June – whose audiences can always be relied on to prostrate themselves before Cartesian-debate-provoking robobabes.

The rest of the world

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Watch the trailer for The Left Ear

Only two non-Hollywood newcomers to the global chart this week: an impressive No 3 entry, with $27m, for Chinese romance The Left Ear, the directorial debut of 90s Taiwanese pop heartthrob and leading man Alec Su. An adaptation of Rao Xueman’s novel about a deaf girl’s love affair with a fellow student, the trailer suggests no opportunity is missed for an emo-soundtracked emotional crescendo. Production company Enlight Pictures has proved a dab hand at pushing actor-turned-directors’ projects into the upper echelons of the Chinese box office: it was also responsible for local megahits So Young, Lost in Thailand and The Breakup Guru. And in Japan, Dragonball Z: Resurrection ‘F’, despite being elbowed from the No 1 spot by Cinderella, still managed $3.8m for the 14th global spot. The 19th feature-length instalment for the series, it beat Fast & Furious to the top spot last week, whose franchise power runs to an embarrassing seven entries.

The future

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Watch the trailer for Gabbar

Avengers: Age of Ultron mighty-morphs its way into the US, obviously. As well as much of the remaining 45% of its global footprint. Thomas Vinterberg’s rosy-cheeked version of Far from the Madding Crowd, opening next weekend on both sides of the Atlantic, is on official counter-programming duties. Other than that, no one is prepared to rear their head on the global box office scene for fear of being sizzled to a crisp by the Marvel death-ray. Well, maybe there’s one man: Gabbar, the crowd-pleasingly ruthless rogue from 1975 Bollywood classic Sholay – resurrected in Akshay Kumar’s new film, Gabbar Is Back. The reference is surely intentional (Gabbar is one of the most iconic characters in Indian cinema), but in this version, a remake of 2002 Telugu film Ramana, the sadistic bandit has become a heroic anti-corruption crusader. Such is Bollywood. After Kumar’s spy thriller Baby took 95 crore ($15m) earlier this year, Gabbar Is Back is being tipped as the one to break through the 100-crore barrier first in 2015. The Indian summer begins here.

Top 10 global box office, 24-26 April

• Thanks to Rentrak. Some of this week’s figures are based on estimates; all historical figures unadjusted, unless otherwise stated.