Some time Friday, Iron Man 3 crossed the $1 billion mark globally. The film earned an estimated $9.5 million at North American theaters and that plus international earnings, it went over the top. As of Friday, the film has earned $1.010 billion globally since it opened up.

The film has earned over $311 million in North America and over $698 million in international markets.

Though it is still powering through, the film looks like it’ll be second to Star Trek: Into Darkness when the weekend receipts are added up.

If you spend $50 or more right now at Lego stores or at the Lego online store, you’ll receive an exclusive set of Iron Man fighting a drone. As I only have the Man of Steel sets to pick up, I’m holding out for next month’s Jor-El exclusive.

Facing it’s first competition with the opening of The Great Gatsby, Iron Man 3 still dominated to box office and came in first place for the weekend. The movie made an estimated $72.5 million bringing it’s two week total in North America to $284.9 million.

The movie is closing in on the billion mark which should be crossed in the next week. In addition to its $284.9 million in North America, the movie has made $664.1 million globally bringing its total at the end of the weekend to about $985 million. The movie will probably cross the billion mark Monday or Tuesday.

With Star Trek: Into Darkness opening this week, don’t expect Iron Man 3 to three-peat.

In what might be the most idiotic promotion ever, the management at the Goodrich Capital 8 Theater is apologizing for a stunt they pulled in an attempt to make Iron Man 3 more fun for the audience. In Jefferson City, Missouri, the theater had a man walk into the theater in full tactical gear and carrying a fake gun. A genius move considering the tragic event that occurred during the opening night of The Dark Knight Rises.

The police and witnesses to the idiocy are not pleased. One Army veteran told the local news the even triggered “memories he never wanted to relive.” Numerous individuals called 911.

Capital 8 Theaters manager Bob Wilkins attempted to justify it to ABC 17 News.

…this was planned months in advance and only a few people were upset, but hundreds were entertained.

When asked if they took into consideration the Aurora shooting he responded.

Absolutely. That’s my number-one priority every day. It’s the safety and security of our guests.

And finally, this gem.

ABC 17 News asked Wilkins if he had any regrets for allowing the publicity stunt and he said, “No, my job is to entertain people.”

Social media backlash followed causing the Goodrich Capital 8 to post an apology on Facebook:

We apologize and are sympathetic to those who felt they were in harm’s way with our character promotion for Iron Man 3. This was not a publicity stunt. We have worked with the Cosplacon group on many movies to dress up and help entertain our customers. We have had many complaints about the members dressed specifically as S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives carrying fake guns. We didn’t clearly tell our customers and some people didn’t realize it was for entertainment purposes only. We apologize that police were called to come out to our theater. We have a wonderful working relationship with the Jefferson City Police Department. Going forward we will take the necessary steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Security and safety for our customers is our number one priority.

(via AV Club)

This weekend saw the explosive debut of Iron Man 3 on the big screen so, it’s appropriate to kick off our new feature looking at the demographics of the fans of various characters with Iron Man. We have been previously running a feature at the beginning of the month looking at the demographics of the greater comic fandom. Now, every Monday, we’ll be checking out one aspect of that fandom. It might be characters or publishers, it’ll vary week to week depending on what’s occurring around that time.

This will vary a bit differently compared to the breakdown of the greater comic book fandom. Instead, this looks might include generic terms for characters, movies, video games, comic series or more. In the case of Iron Man, we included his movies, but we didn’t include The Avengers.

Facebook Iron Man Fan Population: Over 7,805,760 in the United States

That’s about 2.7 million more fans of Iron Man than comic books. Maybe these people do read comics, but don’t “like” any terms that’d tell us so. But, with April’s sales numbers released, Marvel’s Iron Man comic isn’t even in the top ten. That’s a lot of people who can be engaged and converted!

Spanish speakers is a smaller set of the population, 389,580, 4.99%. That’s lower by 0.16% from the greater comic fandom.

Gender and Age

This statistic is fascinating. The percentage of men versus women is similar to that of the generic population. Men account for 64.58% and women 35.40%, women about 3% more and men about the same amount less.

What’s interesting is the age breakdown. Below is the chart of ages and their genders for the generic comic fandom.

This is that same age breakdown, but for Iron Man fans.

The widening of the gender gap in the case of Iron Man fans is much shorter, and reverses when women become the majority of fans at the age grouping “46-49.” We’ve seen that young women are the majority of manga fans, but this is the only other instance so far where we’ve seen women being the majority of fans. Maybe Marvel should be targeting their prose books to this age group and have it feature their Iron Avenger.

We haven’t dived in to figure out where this comes from, but the majority of the population consists of fans of the first Iron Man film.

(Update) Last night in a discussion with some of our crack staff, we pondered what might be the cause of this. The answer might be simply, the star of the movie. While we can’t tell the overlap of Robert Downey Jr. fans and fans of Iron Man, we do see that his fanbase is very much women, a possible factor in the above. Only in the age segment “Under 17″ are men a majority of the fans. See the graph directly below to see how the age of Robert Downey Jr. fans plays out when it comes to gender.

Here’s the full raw numbers as far as age and gender.

Relationship Status

How do fans match up with the ladies man Tony Stark? They seem to have lucked out better as compared to the generic comic population.  While single individuals are still the majority, they don’t make up the majority. Those that are engaged, “in relationships” or married have a slim majority of 51.64%.

Education

Tony Stark is an educated man, how does his fans compare? When looking at this statistic compared to generic comic fandom, we find that it’s… about the same.

Gender Interest

Remember, this doesn’t necessarily mean folks are interested in the same or opposite sex for relationships. But, in this case the same-sex interest is smaller than the generic comic fandom.

Iron Man 3 blasted off the summer movie series with an estimated $175.3 million. That makes it the second all-time opening behind last year’s The Avengers which opened with $207.4 million. The original Iron Man opened with $128.1 million, an impressive gain considered people’s uneasiness with sequels, let alone three-quels. But, it seems audiences decided to forget about the previous two films, instead thinking that this was more of a follow up from The Avengers instead.

The movie audience was made up of 55% of them over the age of 25, The Avengers it was 50%. Iron Man 3 was 61% male versus 60% for The Avengers. And 3D tickets sales was 45% of the weekend, much lower than The Avengers. In my 9pm Thursday viewing the 2D audience was about 3 times the size, if not more. Iron Man 3 made $16.5 million through IMAX.

Over the weekend, Iron Man 3 added $175.9 million overseas, and in 12 days it has earned over $500 million. It also looks like ht film’s deal with the Chinese government has paid off as the movie has earned $63.5 million, that’s more than The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spider-Man earned their entire run. The movie has also earned $42.6 million in South Korea, $38.3 million in the U.K. and $35.8 million in Mexico.

It looks like the film will have some legs, as audiences gave the movie an “A” CinemaScore. The biggest issue will be some big movies opening up in coming weeks.

The third Iron Man film is finally here, with a star-studded cast of characters and an array of awesome armors. But where can you find a toy line that will allow you to bring home all of the characters and armors in the movie? The Marvel Minimates line, naturally! And the first assortment hits comic shops May 8th!

If you’re looking to re-create the world of Iron Man 3, you can make 13 different characters and armors using the interchangeable two-inch mini-figure line. Comic shops will get Iron Man Mark 42 with The Mandarin, and Iron Patriot (with Rhodey and Savin heads) with an Extremis Soldier (with two hair styles), as well as two exclusive sets: War Machine with Maya Hansen and Cowboy Disguise Tony Stark with Aldrich Killian. Toys “R” Us will also get Iron Man/Mandarin, and Iron Patriot/Extremis Soldier, plus their own exclusive two-packs: Suit Up Tony Stark with Heartbreaker Armor and Bones Armor with Silver Centurion Armor.

Look for the specialty assortment to hit comic shops and online retailers May 8th, and the Toys “R” Us assortment to hit TRU stores and toysrus.com shortly afterwards!

Check out some new photos below!

Read More…

In Iron Man 3, actor Guy Pearce plays Aldrich Killian a scientist who undergoes a transformation. When I first saw his character, I couldn’t help but think he looked familiar, like one Val Kilmer played in The Saint. While stills of Killian pre-transformation haven’t been released, I think this interview still is enough of a case.

WizKids/NECA have announced the 2013 Free Comic Book Day figure—Marvel’s Iron Man.

Coinciding with the much-anticipated Marvel’s Iron Man 3, in theaters May 3^rd, the physical Iron Man FCBD promo figure will hit shelves of local hobby shops May 4, and will be available while supplies last.

Each figure comes with a character card and free code to unlock its digital counterpart in HeroClix Online.