'Avengers: Endgame' Obliterates Box Office Records With $1 Billion Global Debut
It was inevitable. Marvel Studios' movie event of the decade Avengers: Endgame has proven invincible at the domestic and worldwide box office, in a historic super-powered $1 billion worldwide opening weekend that obliterates box office records. With the first two days of release generating more than $520 million in foreign markets (the running total as of Friday morning, which actually also includes China's Wednesday receipts) and domestic theaters adding $158+ million on opening day Friday (and on pace for $350+ million for the entire weekend), Endgame is piling up the theatrical receipts so fast that even my at-the-time-mocked prediction of $890-900 million three weeks ago (and which reiterated in my review, which you can read here) looks too conservative.
Consider a moment that just the first two days of foreign release plus yesterday's domestic opening total are already enough to give Endgame the biggest global opening in cinema history, for at least $680 million in combined receipts. (Note: I include the China receipts from Wednesday when counting the foreign two-day numbers, because China's Sunday is a workday to offset Wednesday's holiday there.)
With Saturday and Sunday still to go in this math, it appears unlikely Endgame will gross less than $1 billion. But if by chance audiences in all markets start to cool off and Endgame suffers steep unexpected drops for the next two days, it might have to satisfy itself with "only" about $900+ million.
If as expected Avengers: Endgame does hit $1 billion this weekend, that means it would have to suffer one of the worst drops in film history for a popular blockbuster to make anything less than $2 billion by the end of its run. With just a 2x final multiplier, it hits $2 billion. A 2.1x final multiplier gives it $2.1 billion, a 2.2x final multiplier gets it to $2.2 billion, and so on. Having a $1 billion opener will make this math fairly easy, and easy for readers to understand, in other words.
I do think we'll see some significant week-to-week declines, because of the massive front-loading and the probability families with younger children won't go back for as many repeat viewings due to the runtime and certain elements of violence in the film. But none of that will really matter much at this point, since even if those results trip up Endgame on its way toward a weak 2x final multiplier, it still winds up with $1.9 billion for the #5 spot on the all-time box office charts, just behind Avengers: Infinity War.
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