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Sunday, June 30, 2019

'Avengers: Endgame' Won't Top 'Avatar' At The Worldwide Box Office


The much-discussed and debated re-issue of Avengers: Endgame earned a perfectly okay $5.5 million over the weekend in North America. Its tenth weekend went up around 189% from last weekend's $1.9 million gross. Its per-screen-average went from $2,018 per-theater in 985 auditoriums to $2,716 per-theater in 2,025 auditoriums. So, yeah, it got a bump for sure, but it wasn't exactly the earthquake that hardcore MCU fans were hoping for. The film has now earned $841.3 million in North America from that initial $357 million domestic debut in late April.
That gives Avengers 4 a 2.35x weekend-to-final multiplier. That's still the lowest multiplier for a $200 million-plus opener, but (obviously) the leggiest run ever for a $300 million-plus opener, and it's now just above Iron Man 3 ($409 million/$174 million) and just below Avengers: Age of Ultron ($459 million/$191 million) and Iron Man 2 ($312 million/$128 million) in terms of legs. At the very least, the reissue will let the Russo Bros-directed epic avoid becoming one of the very least-leggy MCU movies in domestic release.
Since the movie never actually left theaters, you can argue that this still counts under the initial theatrical release. That only really matters if it moves up more than a spot on the inflation-adjusted list, as Return of the Jedi's $847 million adjusted-for-inflation cume includes it share of theatrical re-releases. When that happens, it'll bee 13th-biggest adjusted gross for an initial theatrical release and the 16th-biggest counting (now including (The Empire Strikes Back, 101 Dalmatians and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) any and and all reissues.
But, no, it's not going to pass the inflation-adjusted domestic totals for Avatar, be it the initial theatrical release ($749 million in 2009/$866 million adjusted) or the whole cume ($760 million/$877 million). The overseas gross of this "new" version of the movie (with includes an unfinished deleted scene, a Stan Lee tribute and the first few minutes of Spider-Man: Far From Home) was just $2.3 million. With a $7.5 million global gross and a new $2.761 billion cume, this reissue won't be enough to get past Avatar's $2.788 billion worldwide cume.
If this re-release plays like A Star Is Born, whereby the Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga musical romance was put back into 1,235 theaters in early March with 12 minutes of new footage, then we're looking at a multiplier of around 2.53x. That Warner Bros. flick earned $1.854 million on its 22nd weekend and then added $2.399 million to its eventual $215.282 million cume. A similar performance would give Avengers: Endgame an $850 million total by the end. But it could go either way.
On one hand, with the hype dying down and all eyes focused on Spider-Man: Far From Home, the Avengers flick could plummet to Earth and end up closer to $845 million. Conversely, the hype around Spider-Man: Far From Home could continue to make Avengers: Endgame a big deal and thus continue to keep it around for awhile longer. The point of this reissue was to boost Sony's Tom Holland-starring Spider-Man flick, which is being sold as Phase Three epilogue, but it could be mutually beneficial.
Captain Marvel took its biggest weekend jump (+5.7%) the weekend before Avengers: Endgame launched and took its smallest weekend drop (-8.7%) on the same weekend Avengers: Endgame opened with $357 million. It earned an additional $35 million in the run-up to and release of Endgame and has since earned $426.6 million domestic. Black Panther had its two smallest weekend drops just before (-14.6%) and right during (-4%) Avengers: Infinity War's opening weekend. It earned $16.4 million after Infinity War opened for an eventual $700 million domestic cume.
The reissue was always about boosting Spider-Man: Far From Home and punking Warner Bros,' Annabelle Comes Home, and in that sense it was a success. The expanded screen count was partially about being able to supply increased demand stemming from Spider-Man and the extra footage was mostly to make sure we all speculated about it. The reissue was about building excitement for Far From Home, but if Far From Home re-ups excitement for Avengers: Endgame, there you go. It won't be enough to overcome the current $27 million deficit, but c'est la vie.
All of this is mere trivia, since Walt Disney now owns Avatar, they are flying high on Toy Story 4 and Aladdin and they have The Lion King on deck for another likely home run. The only folks who care about whether Avengers: Endgame tops Avatar are hardcore MCU fans who are treating this like a sporting event with their favorite team trying to best their hated rivals. Again, Disney owns Marvel, Lucasfilm and Avatar now, so unless you own stock in Disney this won't affect you.
Once again, I'd argue that Disney would rather be able to sell Avatar 2 in December of 2021 as the sequel to the biggest movie of all time, so in that sense it's not really in their benefit to best the James Cameron 3-D original. If it doesn't happen, Disney will have the biggest domestic grosser (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), the biggest China grosser (Avengers: Endgame) and the biggest overseas/worldwide grosser (Avatar) in their library. If it happens, it happens, but Disney has bigger fish to fry right now.

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