Avengers likely to keep top spot
Handful of upcoming box office challengers — Deadpool, Solo — pose no real threat
With the massive earnings of Avengers: Infinity War over its opening weekend, the $200-million benchmark continues to become a bit less rarefied. Yet the Disney/Marvel movie has just hit a peak that might not be beaten anytime soon.
Infinity War grossed $258.2 million in its North American debut (including $15.3 million on Canadian screens), industry sources show, topping Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($247.9 million) as the biggest North American opener before adjusting for inflation (all figures in U.S. dollars).
Internationally, it secured $382.7 million for a global tally so far of $640.9 million.
And looking along the horizon line, that mark might just hold up for years. Because, really, who’s soon going to challenge it?
Disney’s other powerhouse live-action franchise is Star Wars, but since 2015, each release from George Lucas’s universe has failed to match the numbers of Force Awakens, which represented a huge cultural phenomenon a decade after the prequels.
So don’t expect this month’s Solo to be much of a threat.
Fox has its own hot Marvelcharacter franchise with Deadpool, but next month’s sequel has been tracking for an opening of $150 million.
And come July, Disney/Marvel’s third movie of the year, Ant-Man and the Wasp, would do remarkably well to even open close to Deadpool 2 numbers. (For comparison’s sake: Deadpool opened to $132.4 million in 2016; Ant-Man opened to $57.2 million in 2015.)
The only non-Disney/Marvel movie to open north of $200 million is Universal’s Jurassic World ($208.8 million) three years ago, so the next true challenger to Infinity War stands to be Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in June. Yet even amid brimming summer business, most everything would have to break perfectly for Fallen Kingdom to sniff a quarterbillion-dollar debut. Plus, it will have competition from such franchise films as Pixar’s Incredibles 2 and Warner Bros.’s Ocean’s 8.
Paramount will trot out its blockbuster Mission: Impossible — Fallout in July, and Warner Bros.’s Crazy Rich Asians could do well for a comedy in August. But after that, nothing looks to have true potential to surprise in a major way until December’s Aquaman and Mary Poppins Returns — yet neither of those appears likely to get close to even $200 million in their debuts.
The next contenders, it seems, all belong to Disney: Captain Marvel and live-action Dumbo next March, followed by Infinity War’s biggest threat: itself. The next Avengers sequel, currently untitled, opens May 3, 2019.
And if the second part of this Avengers arc can’t beat the first part, then the $250-million mark could well stand as next year’s Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Toy Story and Frozen sequels, the next Star Wars episode, a live-action Lion King and a Fast & Furious spinoff go whizzing by. In that case: Enjoy your reign, Avengers, until at least 2020.