The moment that the world has been waiting for is finally here. Avengers: Endgame hits theaters and brings the 11-year, 22-film Marvel Cinematic Universe to a (temporary) close. Currently, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most bankable film franchise in the entire world, and its results have only gotten better and better over the years, with three of the last four MCU films topping $1 billion worldwide, something only 38 films in history have done (and 19 of those have been Disney films, which is insane).
This week, the question that most box office analysts are asking isn’t “will Endgame break records” as much as “how many records will Endgame break?” With only five films ever topping $200 million in their opening weekend, we are in unprecedented ground that makes any type of forecasting really difficult. But I’m here to sort through the mess and make some guesses about how successful Endgame will be.
At this point in time, the industry is currently putting the film’s box office between $250 million and $270, with the upper end of those predictions giving the film the best opening weekend of all-time.
Via Vulture
Here’s a few records that Endgame has already broken that show this film is going places no film has gone before.
- It broke The Force Awakens 24 hour presale ticket record … in six hours.
- Its two trailers are the most viewed videos in their first 24 hours … ever.
- It will be debuting in over 4,600 theaters, more than any film ever.
Now that theater count is a double-edge sword because it’s a reminder that Endgame will be losing roughly one showing each day due to its three hour length. However, a lot of theater chains are combatting this problem by staying opening for 72 hours straight and constantly showing the film. Just looking at seating charts on AMC, nearly every seat outside of the first four rows is completely filled for showings throughout the entire weekend, and more than 4,000 showings are almost sold out. The movie hasn’t even been released yet!
Now I may have been a little too ambitious with my predictions for Dumbo and Penguins, but I’m hoping that the Marvel magic I had with Captain Marvel comes back, and I can get closer to the mark this time around. Based off of the astounding 97% Rotten Tomatoes score and the hype around Endgame, I am going with a bold, record-breaking prediction of $305.4 million, demolishing Avengers: Infinity War for the biggest opening weekend of all-time.
Via eBay
With the total weekend prediction in the bag, let’s take a closer look at how Endgame will fare each day. To help me better shape the film’s day-to-day gross, I looked at each of the previous Avengers films (for obvious reasons) as well as Captain America: Civil War because Civil War is practically an Avengers film. Though each of these films opened to at least $179 million, with The Avengers being the first film to top the previously unprecedented $200 million, none of them quite compare to Endgame. Still, you can find a lot of trends amongst the films that will help us understand how this weekend may play out.
| Day | Avengers | Age of Ultron | Civil War | Infinity War | Average | |||||
| Change | %Gross | Change | %Gross | Change | %Gross | Change | %Gross | Change | %Gross | |
| Friday | — | 38.96% | — | 44.14% | — | 42.15% | — | 41.26% | — | 41.63% |
| Saturday | -13.93% | 33.53% | -33.04% | 29.55% | -18.93% | 34.17% | -22.76% | 31.87% | -22.17% | 32.28% |
| Sunday | -17.96% | 27.51% | -10.98% | 26.31% | -30.68% | 23.68% | -15.71% | 26.87% | -18.83% | 26.09% |
One interesting thing to note is that Infinity War‘s percent change and percent gross are remarkably similar to the average. One would think that this happened because Infinity War grossed more, but I didn’t use a weighted average, so it simply shows that over time, there has been less variation in terms of how the film’s gross was distributed throughout the weekend.
Moving onto the Friday gross, I’m expecting the film to make $126.6 million, for 41.46% of the weekend gross. What’s impressive about that is the fact that that one day would give that film the 32nd highest-grossing weekend of all-time. In one day. That’s truly mind-boggling.
On Saturday, I expect Endgame to pull out $98.8 million, which would be 32.34% of the weekend gross and a drop of 22%. If it manages to hold that well, the film would not only be the first film to gross $200 million in its first two days, but it would also have grossed over $225 million making it the third largest opening weekend of all-time. After two days.
Finally, I expect it to keep up the great work on Sunday dropping 19% to $80 million, 26.2% of the weekend gross. If Endgame does as well as I expect, it would break the record for Friday, Saturday and Sunday grosses, toppling Force Awakens on Friday and Infinity War‘s records on the weekend days.
Overall, Endgame is going to break records. I may be overestimating by jumping to $300 million, but I think it is virtually guaranteed at this point that the film tops Infinity War‘s opening weekend record. Last year, Infinity War helped Disney reach $1 billion domestically faster than any film studio ever, and while it won’t quite break that record (thanks Black Panther), Disney should hit $1 billion before May as it is on its way to what will surely by the best box office year, both domestically and worldwide, by a film studio ever.
So here’s to the records, and come back Monday to see how I fared and if I was too bold yet again.