Guardians of the Galaxy has broken August box office records for its opening weekend, and its leading man Chris Pratt has taken to social media to express his delight.

Chris Pratt Guardians of the Galaxy
Chris Pratt thanked fans on Facebook following the success of his new film Guardians of the Galaxy

The 35 year old posted on his Facebook account on Saturday night: “Thank you everyone for watching #GuardiansoftheGalaxy this weekend! We’re all so happy that people are loving it”.

The new film, the latest from Marvel Studios, took a staggering $94 million from US and Canadian box offices after its Friday opening. Analysts initially predicted takings of between $60 million and $75 million, but Guardians of the Galaxy overtook those figures easily.

MORE: Guardians of the Galaxy review

August is traditionally a slow month for cinemas and the release schedule usually winds down in terms of prestigious films, it seems that public appetite for all things Marvel is still ravenous. In 2014 alone, the studio has already delivered a box office topper with Captain America: The Winter Soldier and had two other adaptations made by other studios (X-Men: Days of Future Past and The Amazing Spider-Man 2) hit the summit.

The star-studded film, which also features supporting roles from Zoe Saldana, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper and Karen Gillan, also has the third-highest opening weekend of 2014, a shade behind the aforementioned Captain America: The Winter Soldier back in April and the $100 million behemoth of Transformers: Age of Extinction in June. The huge success for Guardians… is partially down to the huge immediate availability of the movie, opening in 4,080 theatres across the world, with well over half of those in 3D.

In other box office news, the Scarlett Johansson-featuring Lucy debuted in second place, with a mere fraction of the takings of Guardians… ($18.3 million), and the James Brown biopic Get On Up, starring Chadwick Boseman as the Godfather of Soul, came in third with takings of $14 million.