Angry Birds' leads the box office weekend, but 'Civil War' still wins

Those Angry Birds ought to be downright furious, with a #1 opening weekend at the box office that's been immediately overshadowed by Captain America: Civil War's billion-dollar business.

Combined domestic and foreign box office estimates for the weekend put Marvel's big superhero smackdown at $1.053 billion in ticket sales. It's the fourth Marvel movie to cross the billion-dollar threshold — after The Avengers, Iron Man 3 and Avengers: Age of Ultron — and the tenth overall among Disney releases.

Civil War is now the 19th highest-grossing global release on the all-time box office chart, falling right between another pair of Disney releases: Toy Story 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. It's also the top-earning movie of the year, easily surpassing Zootopia, which sits in the #2 spot with $981.8 million.

It's picked up an estimated $347.4 million domestically in just 17 days, which is roughly on par with what Iron Man 3 pulled during the same stretch of time. Expect Civil War to start tailing off, however, as the coming Memorial Day weekend unleashes Alice Through the Looking Glass and X-Men: Apocalypse.

The Angry Birds Movie was #1 in the U.S. over the weekend, with an estimated box office take of $39 million. This is actually the video game adaptation's third week in release, with the new domestic and overseas estimates bringing its global total up to $94 million.

Civil War slides in at #2 for the weekend, with an estimated $33.1 million. It's a 54% drop-off in ticket sales from last week, which is right around what we expected. 

A pair of newly released comedies occupy the third and fourth spots, with Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising and The Nice Guys recording an estimated $21.8 million and $11.3 million, respectively. There's a chance that Guys could slip, however, with The Jungle Book's estimated $11 million leaving it close behind in the #5 spot.

Early 'Captain America: Civil War' scripts featured Wasp, Hank Pym

For those who haven't yet seen Captain America: Civil War, this is your one and only spoiler alert.

What would the big "Everyone versus Everyone" brawl in Captain America: Civil War have looked like if Hank Pym had waded into the fray?

Writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus considered the possibility — and quickly dismissed it — in a very early draft of the film.

"There was one not very good draft where Hank Pym shows up," Markus told Mashable.

McFeely let out a huge guffaw at the mention of the Pym draft. Clearly, his arrival brought some manner of trainwreck potential to the movie.

"I forgot about that," he said. "We won't speculate on what Hank Pym did, but he wasn't as helpful as he needed to be."

Also in the running for the Civil War brouhaha: Wasp. Not the original, presumed dead Janet Van Dyne; it was her daughter, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), who took up her mother's mantle during Ant-Man's post-credits scene.

"In the case of Wasp, [we left her out because] it was really kind of ruining a good story point for her in her own movie," McFeely said.

The writers wanted to be careful about surfacing Wasp in a story where they couldn't take the time to properly introduce her. 

"It was saying her shootout moment isn't enough to be presented dramatically, which is just not true," Markus said.

Bear in mind, this was all long before Spider-Man entered the picture in a serious way.

"Those drafts existed in a world where they hadn't shot a frame of Ant-Man," McFeely explained. "They existed in a world where Edgar Wright is still directing that movie." Wright left Ant-Man in May 2014, more than a year before the movie's release.

That's not to say Spider-Man was a late addition. The 2015 deal Marvel struck with Sony to bring Spidey into the Marvel Cinematic Universe was the end of a long process, and you can thank the Civil War writers for that.

"He's been in and out," McFeely said of the wall-crawler's presence in the script. "We chased it early and said it would be great to bring him in for a lot of reasons."

IMAGE: MARVEL STUDIOS

Fundamentally, Markus and McFeely wanted more fists in the mix for Civil War's big showdown. But Spider-Man specifically also brings a fresh perspective that few other Marvel Cinematic Universe characters could.

"One of the worries we always had in the script was how [to] avoid having the same argument seven times and just bumming people out," McFeely said. The solution, as he put it, was to bring in characters that had a different agenda. Individuals with fewer personal ties to Iron Man or Captain America.

"Spider-Man comes in in a very specific way. Ant-Man and Black Panther too; they all have different points of view," McFeely added. "Particularly Ant-Man and Spider-Man, it's much lighter. It's no accident that those guys are the funniest guys in the movie. They're the least invested."

The lighter moments during that fight are also important, Markus said, for keeping the movie anchored. It's a summer blockbuster, not a heavy drama.

"[Comedy] allows us to leaven the heaviness at a time when it might be getting a little too dour, a little too self-serious," Markus added. "You never want to forget that you're making a superhero movie, despite the fact that we're dealing with — and taking seriously — the issues.

"Don't lose the fun," he said.