Scott Mendelson
Okay, yeah, now I’m pretty comfortable presuming that Avengers: Endgame is going to pass Avatar ($2.788 billion in 2009/2010) at the global box office. The MCU movie earned another $10.7 million in North America (-71% down from its first Monday, but it was never going to catch Force Awakens anyway) to bring its domestic cume to $632 million in 11 days. It earned an additional $34 million overseas on Monday. That’s big for a couple of reasons. First, the film earned 3.4x its domestic number outside of North America, meaning that it’s still a big damn deal in North America even if it is starting to wind down here. Second, the film earned $34 million overseas despite earning only $5 million in China this past Monday.
Even after the gonzo-bananas first 12 days of global release (it opened overseas on April 24) which pushed it past Titanic and to $2.228 billion worldwide, there were two big factors left unrevealed. First, would it remain as big of a deal outside of North America, and would its overseas numbers continue to vastly exceed its daily domestic grosses? Second, how would a likely downturn in China, especially without that Tues-Thurs holiday that inflated the first week in the world’s second-biggest moviegoing marketplace (it earned $38 million on Tuesday/day seven), $74 million on Wednesday/day eight and $50 million on Thursday/day nine), skew the numbers accordingly? At the risk of reading too much into this second Monday of global business, the answers are “yes,” and “not enough to matter.”
Avengers: Endgame just earned $10.7 million in North America and $34 million overseas. And it did so despite dropping 73% from its first Monday ($18.6 million) to its second Monday ($5 million) in China. It earned $44.7 million worldwide this Monday, down 62% from last Monday’s $118 million global cume. So, comparatively, only dropped 55% outside of America and China, which is an encouraging sign should Earth’s Mightiest Heroes get snapped by Detective Pikachu in those two key territories later this week. And with $2.2384 billion worldwide, it could be past Avatar’s milestone by as soon as the end its fourth global weekend. It has earned $1.606 billion overseas, and honestly passing Avatar’s $2.027 billion foreign cume is not guaranteed.
The MCU flick should have around $2.444 billion heading into its third weekend, give-or-take how hard it gets dinged by overseas debuts for Pokémon. A $214 million global weekend (-50% from last weekend’s $428 million haul) would give the film to $2.658 billion by Sunday night, leaving it with just $130 million to go. So barring a fluke, it should become the biggest movie of all time in unadjusted global grosses either by (ironically) the night the Game of Thrones finale airs or right as Walt Disney’s Aladdin is opening over Memorial Day weekend. Presuming it performs “normally” from here on out in terms of legs and screen loss, it could end up with over/under $3 billion worldwide and around $2.06 billion overseas alone.
Yes, this is speculative and presuming that A) the domestic downturn means a Civil War-like domestic multiplier from here on out and B) the film continues to earn around 71% of its money overseas. It could die down too fast after this week and recover a little bit in North America, but there aren’t a lot of realistic scenarios anymore where Avengers: Endgame doesn’t at least become the biggest global grosser of all time and the second-biggest grosser in North America and overseas. Ironically, it’ll still be the third-biggest earner in China, as The Wandering Earth (which just got unceremoniously dumped onto Netflix in North America) earned $699 million earlier this year. – Forbes
