What words could possibly describe the estimated $350 million Avengers: Endgame has grossed in its domestic theatrical debut, and the $1.2 billion it has earned worldwide?
Colossal? Gargantuan? Hulkmugous?
As it stands, the 22nd film produced by Marvel Studios has not only shattered practically every single box office record imaginable — the biggest worldwide debut, the biggest domestic debut, the biggest domestic opening day — it has fundamentally altered what Hollywood perceives is even possible for a film’s financial success. It’s as if, after years of trying to land on the moon, humanity suddenly reached Mars.
Consider Endgame’s global box office record. After opening internationally on Wednesday in 21 markets — including China — Endgame earned an estimated $643.7 million worldwide through Friday, including $156.7 million on its first day in the US and Canada. That’s already the best worldwide opening ever, surpassing the $640 million record set last year by Avengers: Infinity War. And now Endgame is projected to make $565.3 million more through Sunday.
Roughly 27% of that titanic (elephantine? Thanostrinomical?) global haul came from China. As is the case in virtually every international market, Endgame broke the all-time box office record in China, earning roughly $217 million in US dollars in its first three days, and an estimated $330.5 million through Sunday.
Due to the country’s longstanding quota system allowing for only 34 non-Chinese films per year (give or take), it’s still not terribly common for a Hollywood movie to open over the same weekend in China as it does in the US and elsewhere — Infinity War didn’t, nor did Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But Endgame’s massive haul in China underscores not only how critical the country is now to Hollywood’s bottom line, but how deep an impact Marvel Studios has made within China’s carefully stage managed cultural landscape.
Then there’s Endgame’s domestic box office record. Prior to this weekend, the most the domestic box office had ever grossed in total over a single weekend was last year, when Infinity War’s debut boosted overall grosses in the US and Canada to $314.5 million from April 27–29, according to Comscore.
Endgame blew that figure away all on its own.
Even adjusting for ticket price inflation, Endgame’s domestic debut remains lightyears ahead of every other film, blasting well past a $300 million threshold that many thought was mathematically impossible to reach.
The issue, it was believed, was Endgame’s three hour runtime. Some of the most popular movies of all time from Hollywood’s golden era in the mid-20th century are well over three hours long. But you can count on one hand the number of modern blockbusters from the last 25 years that run past the three-hour mark.
Real Life. Real News. Real Voices
Help us tell more of the stories that matter
Become a founding member
Studios have grown reluctant to release any movie at that length for the simple reason that it significantly limits the number of times the film can be shown in a single theater in a day.
Demand for Endgame, however, has proven so insatiable — Fandango reported that it had sold out over 8,000 showtimes in advance purchases — that many multiplexes chose to blanket Endgame on most (if not all) of their available screens. Some theaters added late night and early morning screenings, and a handful of theaters even elected to not close at all over the weekend.
Prior to the advent of digital projection in movie theaters, this kind of total saturation for a single movie was cost prohibitive. Creating and shipping a single physical print for a film can run a studio $1,500, and each of those screenings needs to be supervised by a projectionist. Now, by contrast, theater managers can simply send a movie’s much cheaper digital file to their theaters’ unmanned digital projectors. It’s how Marvel Studios’ parent company Disney can release Endgame in 4,662 theaters — another record.
But Disney also inadvertently discovered a different logistical limit to how much a single blockbuster can dominate a weekend: Many movie theaters just aren’t set up to handle a movie at this scale.