Avengers: Endgame tops the all time domestic and worldwide opening weekend records set by Avengers: Infinity War, opening to a monumental $350M domestic and $1.2B worldwide.
| Rank | Title | Domestic Gross (Weekend) | Worldwide Gross (Cume) | Week # | Percentage Change | Budget |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Avengers: Endgame | $350,000,000 | $1,209,000,000 | 1 | N/A | $356M |
| 2 | Captain Marvel | $8,051,000 | $1,110,180,047 | 8 | -11.6% | $152M |
| 3 | The Curse of La Llorona | $7,500,000 | $86,984,301 | 2 | -71.5% | $9M |
| 4 | Breakthrough | $6,304,000 | $33,714,230 | 2 | -44.1% | $14M |
| 5 | Shazam! | $5,520,000 | $346,349,727 | 4 | -66.5% | $100M |
Notable Box Office Stories
- Avengers: Endgame – I mean…wow. Where to even begin. Well let’s start with the basics . Avengers: Endgame, the culmination of the first major run of the most successful film franchise of all time, opened this weekend to a kind of okay, solid, a little underwhelming #1 with $350M domestic and $1.2B worldwide. So you know, it might break even. For real though that is the biggest opening ever, beating the $257.6M domestic and $640.5 worldwide opening records set by Avengers: Infinity War just last year. It beat every single opening record: biggest foreign opening, biggest opening day, biggest Friday, biggest Saturday, and biggest Sunday on the day that the most expensive TV episode of all time premiered. Not only is the first time any film has opened over $300M domestic and $1B worldwide, and not only is this now the 18th highest grossing film AFTER JUST 3 DAYS, but also this is the biggest jump up in the records ever. Previously, Star Wars: The Force Awakens had the biggest jump opening $39M more than Jurassic World and Infinity War set the international record with a jump up of $98.6M from Fate of the Furious. In context, Endgame jumped up $92.4M more domestic and $568.5M more worldwide! One last insane note, the #2 and #3 biggest worldwide openings combined is still LESS than Avengers: Endgame’s worldwide opening. Absolute. Goddamn. Madness.
- Avengers: Endgame (cont.) – So where do we go now? Well the obvious question is of course will this finally be the film that after almost 10 years dethrones the 2009 megahit The Princess and the Frog as the biggest film ever. Oh no wait…sorry Avatar! To remind you Avatar’s insane record has not even even come close to being broken, standing at $2.78B. The closest film is Titanic with $2.18B and if you count out Titanic’s re-release it’s The Force Awakens with $2.06B (Infinity War is a close fourth with $2.04B). So the good news for Endgame is of course this massive head start, especially in foreign sales. Yes, Avatar set the then domestic record with a huge $760M domestic but it’s the still unbeatable $2B in overall worldwide gross that has made it such a long term champion. Endgame stands at $859M so far in overseas sales in just three days so getting to $2B does not seem that impossible. Domestic is even easier, as even if the film has an absolutely terrible multiplier (say 2x) it still passes $700M domestic. If it has the same multiplier as Infinity War (2.63x) it will gross over $900M. If it has a multiplier over 2.85x (a harder run but not unprecedented for the MCU) it will be the first film to cross $1B domestic and dethrone The Force Awakens $936.7M domestic record.
- Avengers: Endgame (cont.) – However, let’s play devil’s advocate for a second here about why it may not be the biggest domestic or foreign. For one MCU films do tend to have multipliers in the 2.5x – 2.75x range which would mean a truly amazing run of around $700M – $800M which is good but loses the record. Let’s also note that The Force Awakens had the advantage of Christmas time on its side, tons of people with nothing to do which gave the film its incredible 39.8% second weekend drop and its even more incredible 3.77x multiplier. Endgame just doesn’t have that on its side as again MCU films tend to drop a decent amount second weekend and it does have competition. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I really do feel that people are underestimating Detective Pikachu which opens in two weeks. Do you know what the single most lucrative media franchise of all time is? Not Star Wars, not the MCU, not Disney Princesses. It’s Pokemon. And this is the first live action Pokemon film ever made by a major studio. It could put a serious dent in Endgame’s third weekend. And there’s the potential that this weekend was so big because so many wanted to avoid spoilers. Not to mention the three hour runtime, though remember the per theater average this weekend for Endgame was a record $75K. So yeah theaters will make as much room as possible, but ultimately you only have so much time and theater space. And there’s the film’s somber tone which could leave some not wanting to revisit right away. Look, I’m not saying I will just be totally stunned if the film closes to $1B domestic and $3B worldwide. I’m saying don’t open the champagne for that those records yet. Definitely keep it on ice though.
- Avengers: Endgame (cont.) – Now explaining how we got here is obvious but I’d like to quickly sum it up. When Kevin Feige bet the rights of the remaining Marvel characters they owned against the first four Marvel films, he was betting on the idea that he could use serialized storytelling to create a new kind of blockbuster. I thought The Avengers was the culmination of that idea but now looking back it was just a stepping stone. There’s a moment in Endgame that only works if you’ve built this franchise up as well as he and the MCU team has for 11 years. This franchise is so powerful because of that patience, that understanding of story, that understanding of modern culture and what audiences want. You may despise these movies but goddamn, you have to respect them. This opening will stand for a very long time. And even if this film closes and Force Awakens and Avatar keep their all-time titles, it will still stand as the biggest achievement a producer has ever made. There’s a reason so many other franchise have failed to replicate this formula. It’s because it takes time, patience, risk, trial, and error. MCU has never failed fully but it very well could have along the way, a lot of times. It’s truly a huge moment in cinema history to have a film this hyped still be critically acclaimed, generally loved by fans, and this big of hit. And it all happened because it features Fortnite. GOODNIGHT EVERYBODY
w
