Avengers: Endgame continues to amaze with the records it keeps breaking. After besting Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the biggest Thursday previews, it now can claim the biggest single day and opening day record with $156.7 million in 4,662 theaters. This includes that record $60 million in Thursday previews.
That blows away the previous single day opening record of The Force Awakens with $119.2 million and also exceeds Infinity War‘s opening of $106.3 million. The Force Awakens ended up setting a new opening weekend record with $248 million but then Infinity War beat that last year with $258 million. It’s looking very likely that Endgame will blow both those numbers out of the water with $330 million or more by Sunday.
You can also see how those numbers compare to other previous box office records with the numbers listed on yesterday’s box office update.
Right now, we’re looking at a box office phenomenon unlike any we’ve ever seen before with showtimes across the country selling out as people flock to see Marvel’s powerhouse 22nd movie as soon as possible. Besides its amazing 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, Endgame has also received a rare “A+” CinemaScore, which generally means there could be a lot of repeat business from satisfied audiences.
We’ll know sometime tomorrow by how much Avengers: Endgame surpassed that unprecedented $300 million opening, but there’s little question that it might be a long time before we see another movie create such a phenomenon… at least not until J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker opens in December?
Even crazier? Marvel’s other movie Captain Marvel, which has been out for seven weeks and has already grossed $400 million domestically will probably be the #2 movie for the weekend. It grossed $2.5 million on Friday just ahead of last week’s #1 Curse of La Llorona, which took third place.
Check back on Monday for the full box office report.
Box Office Mojo is saying Endgame brought in $350 million in the U.S. for its opening weekend. That would be just over $100 million more than The Force Awakens.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/
Wow. Just. Wow.
Mike
I’m recovering from this weekend’s fanboy tweets proclaiming “Avengers: Endgame” the great accomplishment in cinema history, and hailing Kevin Feige as the equal of Shakespeare, if not old Willy’s superior.
This is when people need to see more movies, preferably a few made before they were born.
Meant to write “greatest accomplishment.” Yes, indeed, that’s what is being said.
How does the Captain Marvel-Endgame duo compare with Black Panther-Infinity War?
But it is a pretty fantastic accomplishment, commercially and artistically. I know some movies have played with comics styles in editing and visuals, but I can’t think of a movie series that has brought a comics-style narrative universe to life like this one. Most franchises have much more direct storytelling. This one wound through multiple sub-franchises and culminated pretty perfectly in this movie. I can’t think of a genre series that has worked as well as the MCU. Not Star Wars. Not Raiders. Not LOTR/The Hobbit. Even back to classic Hollywood, most series tend to start strong and peter out. That hasn’t been the case here at all. Greatest accomplishment? No. But it ranks among the more impressive accomplishments from Hollywood (or world cinema for that matter). And, yes, I’ve seen plenty of movies made before I was born.
Yeah, I don’t know if anyone will remember these films as high art but take what Peter Jackson did with The Lord of the Rings, multiply it by seven, and then stretch the production out over 10 years. That the whole project didn’t end in disaster is amazing. That they made an average of 2 big budget genre flicks a year for a decade and the worst of them are still decent entertainment experiences is beyond astonishing.
Which of course means when it goes wrong, it’s going to go really, really, really wrong.
Mike
And it will go wrong. It always does at some point.
As for high art, I just want good art, and this mostly counts. Visually, the MCU isn’t terribly striking, especially in action scenes, but characterization and the creation of a narrative world are mostly strong. But that also means the movies hold up to repeated viewing because you’re invested in the characters. With friends I’ve compared Marvel Studios to ’60s Motown–two brands where a house style can overwhelm individual vision but also leads to impressively consistent and strong work. It’s some kind of pop culture genius.
Why are comic shops closing as superhero movies make a mint?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/26/why-are-comics-shops-closing-superheroes-avengers-endgame?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0Jvb2ttYXJrcy0xOTA0Mjg%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Bookmarks&CMP
Artist/retailer Lisa Wood (a.k.a. Tula Lotay) says:
“Superheroes have never been more in the public eye, but people don’t come out of the cinema after watching the latest Marvel movie and head to the comic shop. They’ll go online and buy graphic novels at prices the shops can’t compete with. I think that in the future, the industry will move away completely from monthly comics, and just produce graphic novels.
It’s become clear that the MCU style can’t be applied to other franchises, though. DC has already given up on creating an “extended universe” and is wisely going to focus on standalone films. After the relative failure of “Solo,” Disney/Lucasfilm is putting Star Wars on hiatus (after “Rise of Skywalker” opens in December) and is rethinking these films. It seems a SW movie every year may be too much. And have you heard anything about Universal’s Dark Universe lately?
“I can’t think of a movie series that has brought a comics-style narrative universe to life like this one.”
I’m not sure that’s such a great thing. And I don’t want to see it endlessly repeated. (The failures I mentioned above will hopefully mean it won’t be.) Marvel did it well in comics for about 30 years, from the ’60s to the ’90s, and then — in my opinion — it fell apart. Now we have endless reboots and relaunches and very little emphasis on telling good stories.
“Visually, the MCU isn’t terribly striking, especially in action scenes,”
Interesting that the wedding of two visual media — comics and movies — has produced such visually bland movies. There’s hardly a single memorable shot in the whole run, and the action scenes — produced in-house, often before the director and actors are hired — add to the impersonal feeling.
The MCU movies are, for the most part, pleasant entertainment. They’re OK time killers. But that’s all they are to me. The only ones I’ve seen more than once are 2008’s “Iron Man” and 2014’s “Winter Soldier.” Those are among the very few that seem like actual cinema. The rest are just very long and expensive TV episodes.
I’m not a big Zack Snyder fan, but it’s kind of sad that the MCU influence means we likely won’t see anything as deranged as “Man of Steel” or “Batman V. Superman” again. Or anything as quirky and personal as the superhero movies directed by Tim Burton, Sam Raimi and Christopher Nolan.
The current goal, for Marvel-Disney and DC-Warner, is for the movies to be “good enough.” Above all, they don’t want to polarize audiences with anything too offbeat. It’s the bland leading the bland. And fans, who crave comfort-food entertainment, see this as good.
@George
I don’t think we’ll see that ever again. Now that Disney has neutered Star Wars and Marvel, it’s unlikely.
Do you imagine Disney ever casting someone as controversial as RDJ as he was 11 years ago? And produce something as visually striking as the first Iron Man movie? Not to mention the music score.That would never happen. Do you imagine Disney giving the next George Lucas free reign for adapting an old obscure japanese film? That would never happen.
The latest Avengers movie already feels like a Disney movie, safe and comfortable, where you’re supposed to pull your handkerchief on cue to tear up.
@Torsten
Since none on the numbers you can find in “the press” is adjusted for inflation, they don’t really mean anything. Comparing apples and oranges is a vain exercise.
I’m really glad Endgame did so well. I watched it twice, it was so good.
After: Endgame I thought 2 things:
Who needs Marvel comics anymore, no one does. The films do Marvel Comics better, and they understand the characters. Marvel Comics have no audience, can’t sell anything these days, everything’s convoluted, they’ve lost the plot on what makes their characters great.
Eleven years of Marvel Studios and Marvel Comics should’ve capitalised on it. They could’ve rebooted, could’ve made books to suit the audience coming to the films, not aging fanboys. The Marvel brand is so well known now and loved, they missed the boat completely. Marvel Studios is what Marvel Comics matured into. I don’t know what the comics people do all day. They definitely have no publishing plan, no interest in targeting today’s reader, don’t even care about comics.
“Who needs Marvel comics anymore, no one does.”
Rich, I reached that conclusion a year before the first “X-Men” movie opened in 2000.
And now that CGI can convincingly duplicate the most fantastic superhero feats, there really isn’t much need for the comics. I doubt that monthly pamphlets have much future — I’ll be shocked if they’re still around in 5 years — but maybe the key is focusing on characterization, and leaving the action and stunts to Disney. Maybe they could even publish comics in other genres.
But that might just turn off the aging fanboys, without bringing in enough new readers.
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