Disney
I’m old enough to remember when Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s Iron Man knocked all of our socks off by snagging $38 million on its opening day and $102m on its opening weekend. That was back when a $102m debut was big enough to be the second-biggest non-sequel Fri-Sun launch in history, behind the $114m debut of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. Well, ten years later, Avengers: Infinity War, the first part of a two-part story that ends the narrative begun by Iron Man, snagged $39m in Thursday previews alone and just notched a $105.967m opening day.
I'm also old enough to remember when Avengers: Age of Ultron "only" opening with $191 million led to cries of the death of the superhero movie boom and so-called "superhero fatigue." Since then, we've had the likes of Wonder Woman, Logan, Deadpool and Black Panther scoring record-high earnings and mostly positive reviews and audience feedback. And now Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War earned a smashing $105.967 million on its opening day. That’s the second-biggest single-day gross ever, between Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($105m) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($119m).
But here’s the kicker: The MCU blockbuster earned “only” $39 million in Thursday previews, or 37% of its “opening day” figure. Comparatively, The Last Jedi earned $45m (43%) of its opening day gross on Thursday, while The Force Awakens earned $57m (48%) of its opening day via advance-night previews. While Avengers: Infinity War didn’t break the single day/opening day record, it did score more money ($66.96m) on its “pure Friday” (sans the previews) than any movie ever. So technically, Avengers: Infinity War has the biggest Friday gross of all time.
The previous record holders were, not accounting for inflation, Jurassic World ($63.4 million), The Avengers ($62.7m), The Force Awakens ($62.119m), The Last Jedi ($59.79m), Avengers: Age of Ultron ($56.86m), Batman v Superman ($53.8m, Iron Man 3 ($53.25m), Furious 7 ($51.8m) and Black Panther ($50.6m). What this means is that not only was the Walt Disney release a big friggin deal with the hardcore fans, but it played super-duper throughout the standard opening day, operating as a must-see movie for fans and a very appealing flick for general/casual moviegoers.
This may be fearmongering for the sake of “just in case” speculation, but Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice had a huge $53.8 million “pure Friday” from a $27.7m Thursday gross. Lousy reviews and poor word-of-mouth kicked in after opening day, and the advance ticket-fueled opening-30 hours gave way to a frontloaded opening weekend of “just” $166m from an $81m “opening day.” That could happen here, with the film’s potentially controversial third act and/or the assumption that it’s a fans-only affair leading to an inflated first day.
But A) that’s entirely speculation and B) a 2x multiplier from a $105.967 million opening day is still an obscene $212m opening weekend. I must note that the reviews are generally positive, and the movie does deliver on much of what it promises in a big-scale/crowdpleasing fashion. While it may not be a huge factor, the third act Wakanda sequences will help get otherwise casual moviegoers in the door. Although, amazingly, Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther is A) still playing in 1,650 theaters this weekend and B) just passed the inflation-adjusted domestic gross of Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight.
Heck, even if it ends up super-frontloaded, this could still be a Star Wars situation. All three recent Disney Star Wars flicks pulled 2-2.1x weekend multipliers but then kept on chugging after the weekend. Infinity War won’t have the advantage of an extended post-debut holiday break, but it’s not insane to presume that many casual moviegoers chose to wait out the opening weekend madness and see the film on their own schedule. If the Russo Bros’ flick ends up with $215-225 million for the weekend, even after a $105.967m opening day, there might not be a need to panic.
It won’t have much in the way of “big” competition until Deadpool 2 in three weeks. But this is all presuming that it ends up frontloading this weekend like a Twilight Saga sequel as opposed to even a more frontloaded MCU flick. Most of the signs point to a “normal” top-tier MCU multiplier. Yes, we may still be looking at a 2.5x weekend multiplier, right in line with almost every MCU flick (even Iron Man 3, which everyone now likes to bag on) save for Avengers: Age of Ultron ($191 million from an $84m Friday) and Captain America: Civil War ($179m/$75m).
Yes, that would be a $265 million debut weekend, above even the inflation-adjusted $262m launch for The Force Awakens. Infinity War has an A CinemaScore rating and a deluge of mostly positive media coverage. Heck, if it plays like the last two MCU team-ups, we’re still looking at a Fri-Sun debut of $241-$253m, which would be just over/under the $248m launch of Star Wars 7. There is no plausible “worst-case-scenario” that is remotely “not good.” Even a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II-ish multiplier ($169 million after a $91m opening day) gives Avengers 3 a $197m opening weekend.
As much as we’ve become accustomed to these MCU openings over the last six years, it really is a remarkable feat of top-tier consistency. Thor: Ragnarok earned $315 million domestic/$853m worldwide last November and we all essentially shrugged. This was partially fueled by a somewhat misleading “it all ends here” marketing campaign, and that may cause (very slight) problems down the line, but folks still showed up and mostly liked what they saw. I don’t think Avengers 4 has to deal with a Matrix Revolutions-level comedown, or maybe even a Mockingjay part 2 downturn.
I’ll go into whether the film broke the global opening weekend record (Fate of the Furious’ $542 million launch) when those numbers come in, although it has $284.5m worldwide thus far. We can talk about the long-term domestic play when we see how frontloaded the “everyone vs. Thanos” flick turns out to be. But Avengers: Infinity War has crushed the competition (save for Black Panther, which rose 4% from last Friday) and snagged (by far) the biggest “pure Friday” gross of all time. So, yeah, this is a monster triumph and one hell of a start to the 2018 summer movie season.
Disney
Look, you can call Avengers: Infinity War whatever you want — a juggernaut, a monolith, a thrill, a tease. But make sure you call it what it is: a box office behemoth the likes of which moviegoers have only seen a handful of times before. As we await the Friday box office estimates for the latest entry in the dynasty known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, consider this: Whether Infinity War scores the highest Friday gross/opening weekend of all time or merely the third- or fourth-highest, it remains utterly incomparable to the box office record breakers that have come before it.
In the decade since Robert Downey Jr. first graced screens as the whip-smart, wisecracking Tony Stark, the MCU has churned out 19 films starring nearly as many different heroes. Infinity War must somehow reconcile all of their story arcs in one (somewhat) tidy, two-and-a-half-hour package. It doesn’t just shoulder the burden of the Iron Man series, or the Captain America series, or even the first and second Avengers movies, which are the fifth- and seventh-highest worldwide grossers of all time, respectively. Infinity War wants to make good on the endless memes toting it as “the most ambitious crossover event in history.” Its receipts must be evaluated accordingly.
Its $39 million Thursday gross is easily the highest Thursday preview in the MCU (ahead of Avengers: Age of Ultron’s $27.6m), and fourth-highest of all time behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($57m in 2015), Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($45m in 2017) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ($43.5m in 2011). Accordingly, people have already speculated endlessly whether Infinity War has the juice to fly past The Force Awakens’ record $247m opening weekend, or at least land somewhere between that and its sequel, The Last Jedi, which scored the second-best opening weekend with $220m. But Infinity War exists in an entirely different context than those big-budget space operas.
The Force Awakens opened 10 years after the last Star Wars film, Revenge of the Sith. It faced a decade’s worth of expectations from diehard fans, newcomers and old-heads alike, all of them curious whether it would live up to George Lucas’ original trilogy or sink even lower than the maligned prequels. The Force Awakens generated enough goodwill and sheer curiosity to propel its domestic total to $936m, by far the biggest domestic grosser of all time, not adjusted for inflation. In comparison, The Last Jedi’s performance seemed positively meek, closing its stateside run with $620m and generating an enormous chasm between rapturous critic reviews (91% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and tepid fan feedback (a paltry 47% fresh).
Infinity War doesn’t follow a 10-year franchise drought; on the contrary, it’s the latest film in a series that has dominated the marketplace over the past decade. Its “newness” doesn’t factor into its box office performance so much as its epic scope. It also hasn’t proven nearly as polarizing as The Last Jedi, with 84% of critics and 93% of fans giving it positive marks on Rotten Tomatoes. Infinity War also doesn’t find itself in the unenviable position of being the second film in a planned threequel. Even with Avengers 4 on the horizon, Infinity War has billed itself as the end-all be-all superhero showdown, and that sense of finality will send moviegoers flocking to theaters whether they understand the MCU’s future blueprints or not.
And what about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2? The eighth and final installment in the epic fantasy series opened to a then-record $169m, including a massive $91m Friday, still the third-largest in history behind the last two Star Wars movies. It tumbled after its opening day and proved to be fairly front-loaded, ending its domestic run with $381m, which comes out to a 2.25x multiplier. But as an actual movie, Infinity War plays more like Deathly Hallows Part 1, amounting to a very expensive ramp-up to whatever happens in Avengers 4. Deathly Hallows Part 1 opened to a much softer $125m and finished its run with $295m domestic. That’s a 2.36x multiplier and a respectable run for an ultimately filler movie.
It wouldn’t be a total surprise if Infinity War doubled Deathly Hallows Part 1’s first weekend and raked in $250m. But if that does happen, it should also prove far leggier, considering the last two Avengers films’ multipliers: 3.01x for The Avengers ($207m/$623m) and 2.4x for Ultron ($191m/$459m). And, as a person who attended almost every Potter midnight premiere, I can say with the utmost certainty that the excitement leading up to Infinity War far outstripped the hype for Deathly Hallows Part 1, if not Part 2. Again, this movie isn’t the culmination of one hero’s story, but an entire universe of heroes.
Looking at a few other similarly huge summer blockbusters, Infinity War still exists in an entirely unique context. There’s been talk of how it will compare to Jurassic World, which opened to $208m in 2015 and ultimately grossed $652m domestically, the fifth-highest unadjusted total of all time right above The Avengers. But again, Jurassic World picked up the franchise 14 years after Jurassic Park III, and it could stand on its own as a big, bad dino flick, whereas Infinity War comes with years of backstory and world-building. It could also play as a souped-up sequel to February’s obscenely successful Black Panther ($242m four-day weekend and a domestic cume of $683m and counting), but King T’Challa represents just one cog in the hulking (no pun intended) Avengers machine. Besides, Black Panther was such an unprecedented success that it’s hard to compare any movie to it, MCU or not.
No matter how Infinity War shakes out this weekend and beyond, it’s already clear that we’re dealing with a smash hit of epic proportions. It could set new records out of the gate, or it might settle for second or third place. But even if it doesn’t outperform its blockbuster brethren, it demands to be evaluated in a different context. Setting a new opening weekend record would be nice bragging rights for Marvel, but Infinity War serves a greater purpose than making a ton of money: to keep viewers engaged and eager for the next phase of the MCU. After all, even if the Avengers don’t obliterate the record books this summer, they’ll be back and vying for the prize in the near future.
“Avengers: Infinity War,” the latest highly anticipated entry in the MCU, is headed for an enormous $240 million-plus opening weekend from 4,474 North American venues.
Should the Disney blockbuster achieve that number, it will have attained the second-highest domestic opening weekend of all time, close behind 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” with $248 million. Below is 2017’s “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” with $220 million.
The film earned $106 million in previews, including $39 million from Thursday screenings, marking the second-largest domestic first day of all time, again behind “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” The 19th MCU film also received the second-widest domestic release ever, just behind “Despicable Me 3” with 4,529 screens.
“Infinity War” has already earned $178.5 million on the international front from 43 territories, and has pushed Disney past $1 billion in domestic revenue for 2018.
“Avengers: Infinity War” will become the sixth film in history to top the $200 million mark in their domestic debut weekends, joining “The Force Awakens,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Jurassic World,” “The Avengers” and “Black Panther.”
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The MCU’s denizens, including Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chadwick Boseman, Zoe Saldana and many more, reunite two years after the events of “Captain America: Civil War” for “Infinity War,” which also stars Josh Brolin as Thanos, the intergalactic force bent on destruction. Joe and Anthony Russo directed from a script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. The film has earned an 84% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an A CinemaScore.
The original “Avengers” had the highest opening to date for a Marvel film, debuting with $207.4 million in 2012.
In a very distant second is the fourth weekend of Paramount’s “A Quiet Place,” John Krasinski’s thrilller starring himself and Emily Blunt, with about $10 million. The film has earned $140 million domestically in its first 22 days. A sequel was announced to be in the works by Paramount’s Jim Gianopulos at CinemaCon, though Krasinski’s role has not yet been released.
The second frame of STXfilms’ “I Feel Pretty” will nab third place with about $8 million from 3,440 North American locations, with fourth place likely to go to the third weekend of Dwayne Johnson’s “Rampage,” with almost $7 million from 3,508 locations.
Another Marvel title, “Black Panther,” should earn about $5 million in its 11th weekend to wind up in fifth. The most recent Marvel film before “Infinity War” has earned over $1.3 billion worldwide, with over $640 million from overseas. The film starring Chadwick Boseman, Letitia Wright, and Michael B. Jordan opened to $202 million and has topped $683 million in North America to become the third-highest domestic grosser of all time, behind only “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “Avatar.”
Bleecker Street’s “Disobedience” will get a limited opening this weekend against “Infinity War,” and is headed for about $240,000 from five screens. The drama stars Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams and follows Weisz as Ronit Krushka, a non-practicing Orthodox Jewish woman who returns to the community that shunned her decades earlier for an attraction to a female childhood friend. Based on the book by Naomi Alderman, the script was adapted by Sebastián Lelio, who is also directing. The film is sitting at a 90% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Sorry James Cameron, moviegoers aren’t getting tired of The Avengers just yet. The first full day of box office ticket sales are in for Infinity War and the latest Marvel title is shattering records.
Infinity War finished its domestic opening day with $106 million (including $39 million from late Thursday screenings) becoming the second largest domestic first day in history — right in between leader Star Wars: The Force Awakens and third-place finisher Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Disney currently estimates the superhero mashup’s opening weekend to come in between the $225-$240 million range to top The Last Jedi‘s $220 million opening weekend to become the second-biggest opening weekend of all time (Force Awakens will remain at No. 1 with $248M).
Obviously, this also means Infinity War has the biggest opening for a Marvel movie ever.
Including international ticket sales, Infinity War is at $178.5 million through Friday with record-breaking openings in many territories.
For Disney, this is huge. With these numbers, Infinity War has pushed the studio over the $1 billion cumulative ticket sales mark this year in record time (topping the previous industry record of 128 days in 2016, which was also set by Disney).
To read review comments from top critics — with no spoilers — check out our Avengers review rundown. And if do want to talk Avengers: Infinity War spoilers, join us as we explore the surprise keeper of the soul stone.
More to come…
