On the 5th May, shortly fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful release of the first Iron Man movie, Mar­vel made an offi­cial announce­ment about the box office rev­enue of the afore­men­tioned and their goals for the much antic­i­pated sequel.

Iron Man debuted this week­end, gen­er­at­ing an esti­mated domes­tic box office of $100.75 mil­lion for the three-day week­end. This per­for­mance rep­re­sents the 10th best open­ing week­end ever and the 2nd best non-sequel fea­ture film debut ever — sec­ond only to Spider-Man, also a Mar­vel character.

Given this suc­cess, Mar­vel imme­di­ately revealed their plans for Iron Man, stat­ing that a sequel shall be com­ing April 30, 2010:

Mar­vel today updated its fea­ture film slate strat­egy and plans for the next three years, lock­ing in key release win­dows for its char­ac­ter franchises.

In order to focus its atten­tion on max­i­miz­ing the suc­cess of an Iron Man sequel and the launch of Thor in the sum­mer of 2010 and because Mar­vel believes that the sum­mer is the opti­mal time to launch a new prop­erty, the Com­pany will not release a self pro­duced film in 2009.

Mar­vel plans to launch its 2010 film slate with the release of the sequel, Iron Man 2, on April 30, 2010, fol­lowed by the launch of Thor on June 4, 2010.

Addi­tion­ally, Mar­vel is plant­ing its fea­ture film stakes for sum­mer 2011 with an Avengers-themed sum­mer — a two-picture project which will debut on May 6, 2011 with The First Avenger: Cap­tain Amer­ica (work­ing title), fol­lowed by The Avengers in July 2011.