Solid opening for 'Detective Pikachu' as 'Avengers: Endgame' rolls on

But the Marvel heroes still came out on top.

Disney-Marvel’s behemoth “Avengers: Endgame” led the box office for a third weekend in a row, selling $63.1 million in tickets domestically. The movie’s North American ticket sales now total $723.5 million, higher than the $700.1 million earned by “Black Panther” and the $678.8 million for “Avengers: Infinity War” over their theatrical runs last year.

Overseas, “Avengers: Endgame” sold $102.3 million in tickets this weekend, which brings its global gross to a dizzying $2.49 billion since its release in late April, according to the studio.

It wasn’t all great news for Disney-Marvel this weekend, though: Domestic sales for “Endgame” fell 57% week over week. That is a decidedly steeper slump than that of “Infinity War,” which dropped around 46% in its third week.

The decrease allowed Pikachu to come within striking distance.

“Pokémon Detective Pikachu” opened this weekend to $58 million in ticket sales. With the title’s animated Pokémon character voiced by Ryan Reynolds, the movie follows a young man (Justice Smith) who teams up with Pikachu to solve the mystery of his father’s apparent killing. Directed by Rob Letterman, the movie received a modestly positive response from critics (it currently holds a 63% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes).

According to Comscore, which compiles box-office data, “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” actually did slightly better per theater than “Avengers: Endgame.” “Pikachu” sold an average of $13,803 in tickets at each of its 4,202 locations, while “Endgame” averaged $13,525 at 4,662 American theaters.

In a distant third was United Artists’ “The Hustle,” a comedy in which Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway play rival con artists. The movie received mostly weak reviews and opened to $13.5 million in domestic sales this weekend.

Sony’s “The Intruder,” a thriller that opened as the top non-Avengers movie a week ago, brought in an additional $6.6 million this weekend to land in fourth place.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.