Everyone said it would be big and, for once, everyone was right. In its first three days, Iron Man 3 has earned an estimated $175.3 million, making it the second-highest domestic debut of all time behind The Avengers. Worldwide, the Marvel/Disney sequel has earned $504.8 million since its international roll-out began on April 24^th, giving it an enormous global cume  of over $680 million in twelve days.

Here’s a look at the top five US openings of all time, including today’s Iron Man 3 estimate:

Hit the jump for more details, including the weekend’s top ten.

After setting records all around the world with its international roll-out last week, Iron Man 3 has finally arrived in US theatres. The Disney/Marvel sequel took in a reported $68.1 million from its 4,253 locations on Friday, including $15.6 million earned from its Thursday night/midnight screenings. That blows away the $51.2 million debut of Iron Man 2 on this weekend in 2010, though, as expected, it is well short of the $80.8 million earned by 2012’s The Avengers. Overall, Iron Man 3 now claims the second-highest May debut of all time and the eighth best single-day opening overall.

The current projection for IM3’s opening weekend is $169 million – though that number has shifted continuously for the past 24 hours. A couple of million in either direction would not be enough to put the film past The Avengers’ record of $207.4 million, of course – though anything over $169.1 million would replace Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 as the second-highest debut weekend of all time at the domestic box office.  Check back tomorrow for the complete Iron Man 3 breakdown.

The most successful film franchise of all time will be available on home video in one nifty box set early next week with the release of the Harry Potter Wizard’s Collection, and a devoted fan has put together a rather impressive video retrospective to mark the occasion.  Titled “Mischief Managed,” the video goes through all eight film adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s wondrous series, with scenes accompanied by the franchise’s various scores.  It’s a great watch for Harry Potter fans, but it’s also interesting to see the different directors’ visions back-to-back.  The story gets dark quite fast, but it’s neat to see it progress from the colorful, faithful touch of Chris Columbus on the first two films, to Alfonso Cuaron’s inventive and playful twist on Azkaban, to the bombastic Britishness of Mike Newell’s Goblet of Fire, and finally David Yates’ grounded yet haunting stamp on the final four films.

Hit the jump to watch the fan-made video retrospective.  The Harry Potter Wizard’s Collection will be available on September 7th.

With Ice Age: Continental Drift the only wide release of the weekend, any wonder it’s number one? The fourth installment in Fox’s decade-old animated franchise took in an estimated $46 million from 3,881 locations. That’s a bit below the average debut of the first three Ice Age films and noticeably lower than this year’s other animated hits; but with international numbers steering the sequel past $300 million global by Sunday, no one at Fox is sweating the small stuff.

While The Hunger Games and Bridesmaids picked up the most nominations for this year’s MTV Movie Awards, the Twilight fanbase continued to show they would vote online until their fingers bled.  At last night’s ceremony, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 took home “Movie of the Year” as well as Best Kiss for Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.  However, The Hunger Games and Bridesmaids didn’t go home empty-handed.  Melissa McCarthy won Best Comedic Performance for Bridesmaids (the cast also won “Best Gut-Wrenching Performance”), and The Hunger Games won golden popcorn buckets for Best Male Performance (Josh Hutcherson), Best Female Performance (Jennifer Lawrence), Best On-Screen Transformation (Elizabeth Banks), and Best Fight.

Hit the jump for a full list of winners, and click here to check out the footage from The Dark Knight Rises that played during the ceremony.

Nothing came along to poison Snow White and the Huntsman. After a strong Friday launch, the Universal fantasy went on to earn an estimated $56.2 million from 3,773 locations over its first three days or almost as much as the rest of this weekend’s top five films combined. Meanwhile, Marvel’s The Avengers put another big feather (actually, two) in its cap: becoming the third highest grossing domestic and global release of all time.

One of this year’s box office surprises was the thriller The Woman in Black.  Starring Daniel Radcliffe in his first major role following Harry Potter, the Gothic horror tale was based off of a 1983 novel by Susan Hill and made over $125 million at the worldwide box office.  In fact, the film was such a success that Hammer, Alliance Films, Cross Creek Pictures and author Hill are teaming up for a follow-up entitled The Woman in Black: Angels of Death. The film will be set 40 years after the events of the first film, and will follow a new couple’s experience in the same eerie house.  For more on The Woman in Black, here’s all our previous coverage which includes trailers, images, featurettes and clips.

With the film hitting Blu-ray and DVD this week, I recently did an exclusive phone interview with Radcliffe.  We talked about the success of the film and if he was relieved that he could open a film that didn’t have the words “Harry Potter” in the title, what he thought worked really well in the film and if there was something he wished he could redo, how many takes he likes to do, and more.  In addition, we talked about his thoughts on Warner Bros. eventually re-releasing the entire Harry Potter series in 3D, the drama Kill Your Darlings (in which he plays poet Allen Ginsberg), his criteria for picking future roles, and whether there’s a comic book role he’d like to play (The Flash).  Hit the jump to either read or listen to the interview.

The speculation stops here. The Avengers has crushed the all-time domestic weekend record by more than anyone imagined. Taking in an estimated $200.3 million from 4,349 locations, the Marvel superheroes flew past the $169.1 million of previous record-holder Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

As you’re aware, Marvel’s The Avengers is an enormous success.  Disney’s massive marketing campaign looks to have paid off in spades, and the film is enjoying the rare enthusiastically positive reaction from both critics and audiences.  Joss Whedon’s all-star superhero pic currently stands at a very fresh 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and a respectable 69 on the more nuanced Metacritic scale.  Moreover, the film scored a coveted “A+” rating from Cinemascore which measures audience reaction.  The film earned $80.5 million on opening day, making it second only to the $91 million take scored by last year’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.

That franchise closer currently holds the number one spot on the All-Time weekend chart, but does The Avengers have a shot at dethroning The Boy Who Lived?  Hit the jump for more. [Update: The official estimates are in, and it appears that The Avengers bested Harry Potter by a not-so-narrow margin. More after the jump]

It’s official. The Avengers is a monster. After earning a reported $18.7 million at midnight, Marvel’s long-awaited superhero mash-up posted an estimated $80.5 million on its opening day in 4,349 locations. That is second only to the $91 million of 2011’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. In terms of its three-day prospects, The Avengers is set to challenge the aforementioned boy wizard for first place in the All-Time weekend race. The number to beat there is $169.1 million – completely do-able for these critically-lauded superheroes considering they have 77% of America’s screens all to themselves. Meanwhile, Tony Stark and company have already taken in an enormous $304 million since opening internationally last week.  That means that the Disney/Marvel release will likely pass $500 worldwide by the end of this weekend.  And they said Joss Whedon was worried!  Full details tomorrow…

Since the MTV Movie Awards air in the middle of the summer, they’re allowed to pull from successful spring pictures.  This year, they’ve done exactly that and awarded The Hunger Games with eight nominations.  However, MTV didn’t forget the movies of last summer, and also gave eight nods to Bridesmaids.  As for the other nominees, the Twilight series has always dominated the MTV Movie Awards in the past, but The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 only pulled in two nominations this year.  It may be a case of out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new, but it’s worth noting that this was the first year where nominees were chosen by a panel of industry insiders instead of online voting.  I don’t know why MTV made that change (it’s not like anyone can make the awards more respectable), but fans will still get to choose the winners.  While the MTV Movie Awards are really more of a platform for funny sketches and showing clips from upcoming movies, an awards ceremony that allows you to give Drive an award for “A Real Hero” can’t be all bad.

Hit the jump to check out the nominees.  The 2012 MTV Movie Awards air live on June 3rd at 9/8c.

Surprising no one, The Hunger Games stayed in first place for a second week in a row with an estimated $61.1 million, or a decline of 60%.  Meanwhile this weekend’s new releases – Wrath of the Titans and Mirror, Mirror – had to settle for second and third, respectively. And, again, we’re back to being really, really not surprised.

Many of you know that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is preparing to write a new novel aimed at adults, but what’s a Potter fan to do in the meantime? Well, now that all eight films have been released, you can pre-order the ultimate movie set dubbed, Harry Potter Wizards Collection on Blu-ray / DVD Combo with UltraViolet Digital Copy. Details have yet to be confirmed and there is not currently a street date , but the pre-order price is set at about $350 (“marked down” from $500). It’s a limited and numbered edition of 31 discs with over 5 hours of never-before-seen footage. The special collectibles include a map of Hogwarts and concept art, while some of the features appear to have extended editions. Hit the jump to check out the collection.

Now that the Oscars are finally over, the Saturn Awards have come along and graced with nominations that are actually fun/infuriating-in-their-own-way.  There’s some cross-over between Oscars and Saturn Awards this year with Hugo racking up 10 nominations.  But since the Academy doesn’t want to recognize genre movies, they ignored Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.  The Saturns are giving Mr. Potter his due, and the final chapter of the saga also nabbed 10 nominations.  Also doing well on the film side were Super 8 (8 nominations), Captain America: The First Avenger (7 nominations), The Adventures of Tintin and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (6 nominations each).  As for TV, Breaking Bad led with six nominations.  I can live with all of these (although eight nominations for Super 8 is pushing it).

Wait.  I just saw that there were no nominations for Drive.  Never mind.  The Saturn Awards are sham.  Hit the jump for the full list of nominees.  Winners will be announced on June 20th (a long ways off, but meant to hit in the heart of the summer movie season).

I’m really hoping for some surprises on Oscar night if only to make things interesting, but it’s looking less likely every day. Last night The Artist nearly swept the British Academy Film Awards (essentially the British Oscars), taking home the prizes for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Music, Best Cinematography, and Best Costume Design. Meryl Streep was named Best Actress for The Iron Lady, while Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer won Best Supporting Actress and Actor. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy wasn’t sent home empty-handed, as the spy thriller won Best British Film and Best Adapted Screenplay. I was happy to see Senna get some well-deserved recognition, as the Formula 1 doc chronicling the life of driver Ayrton Senna was named Best Documentary.

While George Clooney seemed the favorite in the Best Actor Oscar race for his magnificent turn in The Descendants, The Artist’s Jean Dujardin could easily prove the spoiler. With the SAG Award in hand and now the BAFTA, the French comedian may very well step up to the podium come Oscar night. Hit the jump to see the full list of BAFTA winners. The Academy Awards will be handed out on February 26th.