The fact that it has been insanely hyped as essentially the second coming of Christ may make this less than a surprise, but here it is: Avengers: Infinity War had the biggest opening weekend of all time, blasting past previous record-holder Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Buoyed by a significant volume of pre-ticket sales and very positive reviews, the film earned $250 million at the US box office over the weekend, to a total of $630 million globally – and that doesn’t even include China, where it is yet to open. Forgive me for saying, but that is a lot of cheddar.
For comparison, The Force Awakens nabbed $248 million at the US box office on its opening weekend. Adjusted for inflation, that looks more like $260 million.
Possibly the most staggering thing about this is that it’s becoming a one-pony show, and that pony is named Disney. The company now owns nine of the ten top opening weekends of all time, six of which are Marvel movies. The fact that no one else seems capable of mining this ultra-lucrative ‘cinematic universe’ style of distribution makes it seem as if the Infinity Gauntlet will be on Disney’s hand for the foreseeable future. Little movie reference there for ya.
Keeping in mind that Thor: Ragnarok and – of course – Black Panther were also massive box office successes, Marvel and Disney are basically hitting a long home run streak.
“To have now the biggest movie of domestic history as one of the Marvel cinematic universe films seems like a fitting tribute to the Marvel Studios team which has had just an astounding, unmatched run in the last decade,” said Dave Hollis, head of distribution for Disney.
Quite. It’ll be interesting to see how Marvel maintains the momentum of their unprecedented cinematic behemoth in the next decade.
