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Disney Scores with Captain America

The Walt Disney Company’s (DIS) continues with its extraordinary run at the box office. As per media reports, Disney’s latest release, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, has emerged as the highest grossing film for the month of April. The film raked in $96.2 million in its opening weekend, bettering the record previously held by Fast Five for the same month that garnered about $86.2 million in its debut weekend in 2011.

Overseas, the weekend box office collections have come in at roughly $107.1 million. Moreover, Captain America outperformed the estimated box office collections of its prequel ($65 million, 2011), but came in below the collections of Iron Man 3 (2013) and Avengers (2012) in their respective opening weekends.

Given the terrific response, trade analysts remain optimistic about movie’s box office collections.

The sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger picks up two years after The Battle of New York, (Avengers 2012) where Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans) a.k.a. Captain America, still working for the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., battles a mysterious assassin named Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). The movie also stars Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow. It has a production value of $170 million and is directed by Anthony and Joe Russo.

Disney had acquired Marvel Studios in 2009 for $4 billion. Ever since, Marvel has churned out some highest-grossing movies of all time for Disney, validating its money-making ability.

These films include Avengers, which collected $1.5 billion at the box office world wide, making it the third highest grosser of all time. Further, Iron Man 3 had grossed $1.2 billion and emerged as the fifth highest grossing movie of all time. Avatar, distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, a subsidiary of Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc. (FOX), dominates the list with $2.8 billion in collections.

The success of Captain America has inadvertently kicked off an early summer season. Generally, the summer season begins in May and has some of the year’s biggest movies lined up for release.

Disney has Rio 2 (April 11), Bears (April 18) and Maleficent (May 30) in the pipeline. After Frozen’s estimated $1 billion in ticket sales, globally, expectations from Disney’s animation studio have also skyrocketed.

Currently, Disney carries Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Some other media stocks worth consideration include Viacom, Inc. (VIAB) and Digital Cinema Destinations Corp. (DCIN). Both of these have the same Zacks Rank as Disney.

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