'Captain America 2' Opens to Huge $37M; Kevin Feige Talks Connections to 'Age of Ultron'

What Marvel has been able to accomplish of late has been unprecedented. Never have we seen a single film like The Avengers have such a dramatic box office impact on what are basically spinoff films. We've seen Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World reach franchise highs over the last year, and now Captain America: The Winter Soldier has done the same, opening huge on Friday night with $37M. That includes $10M on Thursday night showings alone. At this rate, the film is expected to earn somewhere between $90M-$93M domestically over the weekend. Worldwide it stands at $132.4M and is likely to challenge or surpass what Thor 2 did last year. It's all but certain to beat out the $370M of Captain America: The First Avenger.

And as the Marvel money train keeps on rolling, fans probably noticed there were more than a few Easter Eggs dropped in the film, some of them hinting at what's coming up next. Kevin Feige is always a chatty sort, but he gets very talkative at times like this, and he talked a little about the connections between Captain America 2 and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Consider this your warning because there are some SPOILERS beyond this point.

One that's clear about Captain America: The Winter Soldier, is that it's the film that seems to have the most connections. We've seen how it relates to Agents of SHIELD, but it also ties into the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron. And one member of the team who was mysteriously absent while SHIELD was being taken over by HYDRA was Clint Barton aka Hawkeye. It was especially strange since his oft-partner Black Widow was very much in the middle of it. Feige talked to CraveOnline and said the answers to Hawkeye's whereabouts will be answered soon....

Feige: "We will discover, later, the answers to that question. But it really came down to how many players can you have on the field at this time? We really wanted to bring in Falcon, we really wanted to team [Captain America] up with Black Widow, we really wanted Fury to have more of a part than he’s ever had in any of the other movies before. We wanted, ever so briefly, to introduce Sharon Carter. And we had a fun place for Maria Hill to be involved. So we didn’t want to just have, “Hey, I’m Hawkeye! Hey, I’m Iron Man!” We want to avoid the brief cameos of the week....Not every character from every movie is going to be in Age of Ultron, for sure. But Joss [Whedon] is excited and, for the characters you haven’t seen since the first Avengers – like Hawkeye, like Hulk – there’s a reason for that, and that gets showcased quite prominently in Age of Ultron."

Marvel has a habit of dropping Easter Eggs where only theeagle-eyed audiences can find them. But in the case of Doctor Strange, he's mentioned in Captain America 2 openly and prominently by HYDRA who consider him a potential threat. Doctor Strange is expected to be one of the next films Marvel announces, and we've even heard of a few directors up for the job. But when asked about Strange's name being dropped so casually, Feige revealed very little about what it could mean....

Feige: "Well, we know what it means and where we want to head with it, but we were comfortable with keeping it in there and leaving it in there because there are a few different ways to interpret it. The whole thing, what Sitwell’s saying is, this algorithm is going to predict if you’re going to become a problem for Hydra or not. So you don’t have to just be Tony Stark, actively plotting to save the world. You could be a kid whose SAT scores and whose essays have indicated that you’re going to be a problem one day. So is Stephen Strange the Sorcerer Supreme? Probably not at that point. Is he an unbelievably talented neurosurgeon who’s opinionated and kind of arrogant? Probably. That might put him on the list.​" 

Feige says they're "a few months from announcing" officially their 2016-2017 slate, which probably means Comic-Con will be the place to be for those.