Shop Talk: The Avengers
By David Mumpower
May 16, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Last weekend, Kim Hollis and I mentioned the possibility that The Avengers could pass $400 million by Wednesday or Thursday. It will fall short on Wednesday by $3-4 million. On Thursday, it will become the fastest movie to $400 million, beating The Dark Knight’s extraordinary 18 days by four days. In the summer of 2008, BOP was inundated with queries from Batfans regarding whether it would overtake Titanic. There were any number of untoward comments involving my (apparently questionable) parental lineage as I described why that was unlikely. Oddly, Avatar failed to generate quite the same level as excitement, presumably because the chase occurred in January and early February, a time of lowered box office interest.
Whether The Avengers will take a run at Avatar remains to be seen. At this point, however, it is a foregone conclusion to exceed The Dark Knight as the most popular comic book movie of all time. I will explain why in just a moment. First, I would like to add that The Avengers has the opportunity to do what Batman could not: overtake the Titanic. In fact, what prevents this from being a foregone conclusion was the seemingly pointless re-release earlier this year. The Avengers is quite likely to break $600 million, but James Cameron recently moved the bar to $658.4 million (and still has another couple of million to go). Avatar, you may remember, finished with an unimaginable $760.5 million. The Dark Knight’s final domestic take was $533.3 million. Keeping these totals in mind, let’s examine The Avengers.
You probably know by now that The Avengers fell 50.3% this past weekend from $207.4 million to $103.1 million. Its staying power on Monday and Tuesday of its second week was not quite as impressive, but we’re splitting hairs at this level of box office dominance. After earning $36.58 million the first two days of last week, The Avengers fell 55.2% to $16.40 million so far this week. The good news is that most of that decline fell from Monday to Monday, which isn’t unusual for any mega-opener. The 52% Tuesday-Tuesday drop is right in line with its weekend total.
We cannot compare The Avengers directly to Avatar and Titanic, both of which were December holiday titles. Even The Dark Knight is a shaky comparison in that The Avengers faces a disadvantage in the short term that will become an advantage in a month. With kids still in school, The Avengers has deflated weekday numbers. Consider that The Dark Knight, a movie it has beaten by 33% on the weekends thus far (no, really), earned $45.36 million on its first Monday/Tuesday and $20.16 million its second Monday/Tuesday. That is a total of $65.52 million on comparable weekdays, 24% better than The Avengers’ $52.98 million. This is a phenomenal demonstration of how advantageous summer vacation days are for movie theaters. The Avengers is undeniably the more popular title, yet The Dark Knight’s weekdays are better. Keeping this in mind, here is what we can determine.
We know from analyzing box office history what the percentage takes are of films in release after their 12th day in release. The Dark Knight had earned $333.93 million at this point its release, an amount representing 62.6% of its final take of $533.35 million. In other words, The Dark Knight had “only” $200 million left in the tank after day 12. If The Avengers holds that same pace, it would wind up with a final domestic take (warning: WOW!!! number ahead) of $622.2 million. The measurement will not work for Avatar and Titanic since at this point in their release pattern, they were only at $250.42 million and $104.38 million, respectively.
There are other titles we can use as models, though. Iron Man 2, Spider-Man, Iron Man and Star Trek are all early to mid-May releases that will fit the pattern well enough. I am loathe to use older titles for modern box office as a rule, but Spider-Man is otherwise a fairly good fit in terms of scale and release. So, I’ll make an exception here. Its 12-day take represented only 57.7% of its final take. The first Iron Man film is at 58.1% while the sequel is (understandably) much lower at 69.9%. Even though Star Trek is much smaller in scale (The Avengers is already $130 million ahead of its domestic total), I like the other similarities in that both films were the subject of glowing critical praise and word of mouth. It was at 60.0% at this point in release.
Using the above delimiters, what we can conclude is that the worst case scenario for The Avengers is the Iron Man 2 model of 69.9%, which would represent a $557.2 million final box office total. Working backward, the Star Trek model would signify $649.1 million, over $25 million better than The Dark Knight model above. The best case scenario models would be Iron Man ($670.3 million) or Spider-Man ($675 million). Yes, there is a legitimate possibility that Joss Whedon’s second directorial effort, The Avengers, earns $650 million more than his first one, Serenity. The best movie of 2005 earned $25.5 million domestically. I struggle to find scenarios where The Avengers tops out under $550 million. At this moment, the line of demarcation appears to be $625 million, which would make it not only the number three film of all time but also the second best performer in initial release.
At the start of the year, if anyone had tried to tell you that The Hunger Games and The Avengers would earn a combined billion dollars domestically, you would have thought they were nuts. This is exactly what is going to happen, though. 2012 box office is absolutely incendiary thus far.