Weekend Wrap-Up
No Dark Shadows on Marvel's Avengers
By John Hamann
May 13, 2012
The Avengers' first Saturday take is the true single day record breaker; however, you won't see it at the top of the biggest single day grossers of all time list. The Avengers' first Saturday actually ranks fifth all time at $69.7 million, but it lives behind its own Friday gross, Harry Potter 7.2, and two Twilight films. Why? Midnight screenings. The others films in the list are propped up by their midnight grosses, so really, The Avengers' second day is really the true record holder.
The Avengers set another record for fastest to $300 million, doing it in only nine days, one day faster than The Dark Knight did it in 2008. The Avengers missed setting the record in eight days by about $857,000, so the record could be eight days after actuals are reported on Monday. Looking ahead, The Dark Knight took 18 days to reach $400 million. The Avengers could accomplish this feat as early as Wednesday, which would be 12 days, and 13 days is a guarantee. As scalding as the pace was for The Dark Knight, The Avengers is almost 50% better.
The second weekend total for Marvel's The Avengers comes in at an estimated $103.2 million, as it becomes the first film ever to earn $100 million in its second weekend. This is the 19th biggest weekend of all time, meaning that The Avengers owns two spots in the top 20. The Avengers dropped only 50% from the biggest opening weekend of all time, where the former title holder (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) dropped 72%, and The Twilight Saga: New Moon dropped 70% (prior to The Hunger Games, New Moon was the fourth biggest opener of all time). If we look at The Avenger's second weekend percentage compared to the previous top ten openers, it easily beats the average of 61.9% for those ten films. Additionally, the previous record for best second weekend decline was The Dark Knight's 52.5% in 2008, so again, The Avengers is showing unique behavior compared to other blockbusters.
The Avengers now has a running total – after only 10 days of release – of $373.2 million. That's enough to already put it in the top 20 overall highest grossing domestic films of all time, and has it already knocking on the door of The Hunger Games, which has a gross so far of $386.9 million. To say that The Avengers are creating box office history is a huge understatement – every time it rolls through a weekend, records fall like rain drops. Overseas grosses have been no different, and the worldwide total for The Avengers sits at an awesome $1 billion. To put this in perspective, The Hunger Games needed 52 days to become the 13th biggest film of all-time. The Avengers needed a week and a half to effectively match it. Equally amazing is that The Avengers is, if anything, more popular overseas, already becoming the 12th movie to earn a billion dollars worldwide. It is a mortal lock to become the third most popular film, perhaps as early as next week. The current holder of that position, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, earned $1.33 billion. It has a chance to become the first non-James Cameron film to reach the $2 billion worldwide mark, as well as the first non-James Cameron film to join the $600 million club domestically.
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