Captain Marvel gets off to a heroic start at the box office with a $20.7 million Thursday debut

Captain Marvel is flying higher, further, faster at the box office.

The Marvel superhero film grossed $20.7 million in Thursday night previews, Deadline reports. This is the fifth best Thursday for a Marvel cinematic universe film, coming in behind only Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Black Panther, and Captain America: Civil War. It's also the second-best Thursday night for a superhero's debut film after Black Panther's $25.2 million, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Captain Marvel, Marvel Studios' first movie to center around a female hero, is expected to make somewhere between $120 million and $155 million in its opening weekend, and this Thursday gross puts it right on track to fall on the high end of that range. For comparison, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 made $17 million on Thursday night and went on to gross $146 million. Should Captain Marvel's opening weekend come in ahead of Guardians but behind Civil War, that would make it the Marvel series' seventh biggest opening weekend.

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The movie is also faring quite well overseas, having made $34.3 million in China so far, which Forbes reports is the second-best opening day for a comic book film in that country after Avengers: Infinity War.

Infinity War likely gave Captain Marvel a box office boost, as the post-credits scene of that movie, which is the fourth highest-grossing film ever made, teases the introduction of Carol Danvers and suggests she will be crucial to the events of Avengers: Endgame. In what is one of Marvel's shortest gaps between movies, Endgame, which Danvers returns in, will be released on April 26, seven weeks after Captain Marvel.