It’s a unique case of second-best still being great.

Avengers: Age of Ultron smashed the box-office this weekend with a whopping $187.7 million opening sales, garnering the honor of having the second-best debut weekend of all time.

The number one spot is still being held by its predecessor The Avengers, which set the bar impossibly high when it earned $207.4 million when it opened in 2012.

Executives over at Disney are understandably still ecstatic with the way the follow-up to The Avengers has performed, especially since they went up against 3 major sporting events – the Kentucky Derby, game 7 between the Spurs and the Clippers and the highly-anticipated fight between Mayweather and Pacquaio.

Walt Disney’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron” snagged the second-best debut weekend of all time: http://t.co/PbF9Qj1ehX pic.twitter.com/9qlEKsGPpG

— Forbes (@Forbes) May 4, 2015

Dave Hollis, Disney’s head of distribution has acknowledged that “we’re in a rare air here.”

“Having the second biggest opening weekend in the history of the movie business is always going to be something you walk away overwhelmingly happy with,” he added.

But Age of Ultron does pick up the honor of having the biggest debut for a sequel. Its opening weekend has eclipsed Iron Man 3’s $174.1 million opening salvo in 2013.

The Joss Whedon helmed movie sees superheroes Black Widow (Scarlett Johnasson), Captain America (Chris Evans), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner),  Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) go up against technological villain Ultron (voiced by the amazing James Spader). New characters Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, also known as the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, are also introduced. They’re played by Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson respectively.

The latest offering from the House of the Mouse heralds the start of the summer season and insiders are hopeful that it’s a sign of good things to come.

A robust summer offering that boast of movies like “Ant-Man,” “Jurassic World,” “Pitch Perfect 2”and “Magic Mike XXL” should come up with good numbers and help the industry recover from last year’s dismal performance.