No, it didn’t keep the crowd from going to ‘Iron Man,’ but ‘GTA IV’ did manage to shred the record set by ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’ last year. It also didn’t make the $1 billion some wildly expected, but $500 million in one week isn’t a bad figure either if you ask me.

The last ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ did $406 million at the box office in its first six days. But you have to keep in mind these games are 60 bucks a pop. If you go by roughly $10 per movie ticket, over 40 million people saw Pirates, while only 0.8 million bought the GTA game.

“I’m sure GTA IV beats Hollywood movie opening weeks,” analyst Michael Pachter said. “But it depends how one looks at it. I’m sure more people saw Iron Man than played Grand Theft Auto in the past week, but fewer dollars changed hands.“

I guess Robert Downey Jr. can start training again this Monday, because ‘Iron Man 2′ is pretty much confirmed by now. (for all the latest numbers see Iron Man box office facts and rumors)

‘Iron Man,’ which opened in about 60 territories this week, is expected to make over $100 million this weekend in the US alone. That’s just a couple of million short of the highest non-sequel opening by ‘Spider-man’ in 2002, which made $115 million. Yes Sony, you can be proud too, everybody is happy this weekend. Not even a little game called GTA IV could stop the iron man from exceeding every expectation.

Holding the world in a tight grip, ‘Iron Man’ is expected to exceed the $200 million bar worldwide, which makes it profitable in its first weekend if you don’t consider marketing costs. Not only a remarkable accomplishment for a relatively unknown comic book character, but also for Marvel. It’s their first independently produced picture and they didn’t shy away from taking some bold steps with this one. No studio in their right mind would have taken Robert Downey Jr. for the leading role. And I’m sure the Marvel Entertainment stock will make a little jump ahead of the official weekend numbers this Monday.

Again, you can go here for the Iron Man box office totals.

Apparently Paramount was just downplaying their box office star when they said they were expecting ‘Iron Man’ man to do $60-$70 million. Sure, you don’t want people to point and laugh at you when your blockbuster makes $50 million less than you expected, but sources now say ‘Iron Man’ is currently out-tracking last summers’ ‘Transformers.’

While the ‘Total Awareness’ was bigger for ‘Transformers,’ the Robert Downey Jr. vehicle has a better ‘Definite Interest number’ (51%-46%) and a better ‘First Choice score’ (29%-23%). With an $8 million preview on Thursday, a $38 opening Friday, and respectively $37 million and $28 million for Saturday and Sunday, this will make for a $111 million opening weekend. And it will put the movie in the top 10 of best openings and the second place for a non-sequel opening.

Personally, I think it won’t do more than $100 million in its opening weekend, but I’m not sure how much hype there is for this movie in the US. You could consider the lack of big movies the last weeks, which would make for a hungry public. But with all the upcoming box office monsters and GTA IV just getting into the households, the public might not be that hungry after all.