Captain America: The Winter Soldier Headed For $110 Million-Plus Opening Weekend?

How high can Captain America: The Winter Soldier soar in its opening weekend? All the way to a record for a movie opening in April, most likely, and possibly even higher than Marvel could have figured.

That’s what the combination of excellent reviews and anticipation for all things Avengers can get you. The Winter Soldier pulled in $10.2 million in Thursday advance and midnight showings, a sign that it’s in for big things for the full weekend. Fast Five holds the current April opening weekend mark of just over $86 million, which it set in 2011.

Almost every Hollywood-focused website is predicting that Cap will break that record, but it could be on its way to setting a truly monstrous new one of $110 million or more. Consider that when Thor: The Dark World debuted last November, it made $7.1 million on Thursday night on its way to $85.7 million for its first weekend. Captain America: The Winter Soldier bettered that performance by over 40 percent, and if it could keep up at that pace for the whole weekend, it would end up with a box office haul of over $120 million.

That would be a crazy number, but even beating out the second Thor flick by a more modest 28 percent from Friday through Sunday — possible given the great critical reviews and even better moviegoer buzz — would get it to $110 million by the end of Sunday night. We’ll know more when we see Friday numbers later today, but there’s no doubt Marvel (and its parent company Disney) has another big hit on its hands.

Our own Christina Roberts is seeing Captain America: The Winter Soldier on Sunday and will give us her review then, so check back to see if she thought it lived up to the hype.

(All stats via Box Office Mojo)