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.