We don’t report on box office results much here at Trouble City (that’s best left to the numbers gurus on our forums) but something must be said about Avengers: Endgame. Simply put, the film is making more money than a small nation’s GDP. Deadline is reporting that the Marvel film made $158 million in its opening day. Let me repeat that: $158 million. In. Twenty-four. Hours. That total is what most studios dream of for an entire weekend, let alone one freaking day. The estimate for its total domestic opening weekend now stands at around $349-356 million. That would easily be the biggest opening weekend of all time and it wouldn’t be even close. For reference, The Force Awakens brought in $247 million in its opening weekend. Wowza.
This a monumental opening and far bigger than anyone — even the most optimistic forecasters — predicted. It’s just a simply stunning number and proves that Marvel still has a lot of gas in the tank. Any talk of superhero film fatigue should be tossed directly out the window. People still love these movies. If anything, they are loving them more than ever. Now, the numbers are a bit higher because this is a grand finale to the Avengers saga but they still strongly suggest that Marvel shows no signs of slowing down. As for Disney, they must be laughing all the way to the bank. Consider this: Endgame’s biggest (and only?) competitor to steal the crown of biggest opening weekend will be the upcoming Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker which is also a Disney property. Good Lord that studio is just printing money these days.
In the grand scheme of things box office grosses don’t really matter but it’s still a bit exciting to see such a huge weekend. I remember being shocked at the first Spider-Man’s opening weekend of $114 million all those years ago. Seeing a film open with more than $100 million was shocking and unlike anything I’d ever dreamt of. Now that feels like a million years ago.
The summer has barely started and there’s practically no way that any film will come close to the business Endgame is generating. Marvel/Disney doesn’t just have the biggest hit of the summer on their hands. They might have the biggest hit of all time.