By Todd Allen

The juggernaut that is the Avengers movie (as opposed to the Juggernaut in the X-Men films) is still rolling.  How did it do this weekend?  The weekend box office estimates for the U.S. are for $103M.  That brings the global total to $1,002,082,000.  Marvel has to be feeling pretty good.

In the global market, Box Office Mojo has Avengers as the #11 film all-time. Bigger than any Marvel film before it.  Bigger than Dark Knight.  Bigger than all but the last Harry Potter.  I’d be surprised if it wasn’t #6 or #7 all-time by next weekend.  Granted, you’ve got some of the 3D screenings boosting the box office totals, but this is a very, very big film.  Avengers has really captured the both the domestic and foreign markets in a way that relatively few films have.

This weekend’s $103M was a 50% drop-off from last weekend.  That’s a relatively high drop-off, but then again, opening weekend was a record setter and you just don’t keep that up.  Let’s say Avengers drops 50% at the weekend box office for the next 4 weekends.  That would add roughly $95M to the Avengers coffers, for something in the neighborhood of $470M domestic box office dollars… and that’s not even counting ticket sales Monday through Thursday for the next month.

This is looking like a top 5 all time grossing film both internationally and domestically.  Possibly top 3.  It will be tough beating out Avatar and Titanic, but everything thing else seems possible.

1 COMMENT

  1. Well, technically, this is currently the #3 Marvel movie. Spider-Man #1 and #2 rank higher.

    It matched the Billion Dollar record pace of Avatar and HP7.2 .

    More worldwide box office is due in August, when Japan screens the movie.

    MIB3 is the next big movie to open, on May 25th. Not much hype yet for that yet (no trailer during Avengers).

  2. why is surpassing titantic or avatar out of the realm of possibility if the avengers is currently on pace to earn more than either of them?

  3. Avengers seem to be more front loaded at this point and the Summer season is more crowded than those films than when Titanic or Avatar came out. Those films got Oscar nominations and came out in December.

  4. A 50% second weekend drop is actually quite astounding for this movie. I think most predicted it would have a 60-64% drop (typical of front-loaded superhero flicks). I don’t see it dropping 50% each of the next four weeks though… It’s going to be smaller, in the 30-40% range. This movie has serious legs with amazing reviews, great word of mouth, repeat customers, and no real competition soon.

    As for domestic totals, I think it completely has a chance of beating Titanic and maybe Avatar. Spider-Man and Dark Knight’s opening weekend accounted for 28% and 29% of their total runs. Apply that to The Avengers, and you’re looking at $700M+.

  5. Oh, and not only will this be Marvel’s biggest worldwide movie, it will also be Disney’s biggest worldwide movie. It’s only $64M behind the top movie now, which is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.

  6. So does the huge success of this movie disproves the claims by Hollywood that piracy (specifically, internet piracy) hurts ticket sales at the box office?

  7. Newsarama did some number crunching and calculated that if Avengers has legs similar to say Iron Man 1 or The Dark Knight, Avengers will make $680 million. Now it’s drop this second weekend of 50.3% is bigger than Iron Man’s 48.1% but is better than the Dark Knight’s 52.5%.

    In other words Avengers does have a shot at beating Titanic, but Avatar is definitely out of range.

    The fact that Battleship is tracking really quite badly and Deadline.com is reporting that theatres already want to give some of Dark Shadows’ screens to Avengers, also play in it’s favour.

  8. Battleship seems to have done well world wide (opening before Avengers) — I’ll be curious to see if Battleship does less well in America, where it is coming in behind Avengers.

  9. But just think how much more money it would have made if Steve Bissette hadn’t persuaded us all not to go.

  10. @tom s – avengers seems that way to me too but i still wouldn’t be shocked if it broke avatar’s record. surprised maybe. guess we’ll so tho!

  11. “Isn’t it awesome to work in comics!!!?”

    You might want to talk to people who work in TV and movies before singling out comics that way.

    Mike