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Although we’ve come to the end of the road, still I can’t let go. It’s unnatural.

I apologize for the Boys II Men earworm, but I suspect you know where I’m going with this. Over the past month, I’ve been updating the progress of The Avengers as the Marvel masterpiece continues its run at box office history. Alas, the train is coming into the station with The Avengers having earned almost its entire final domestic gross by now. This is when we can (largely) wrap up the story of the third most popular movie in box office history.

Before you grab your torches, pitchforks and Gamma Hulk Hands and head to my barn (I’m Tennessean. Of course you think I live in a barn.), let me be precise. No, The Avengers is not leaving theaters any time soon. To the contrary, it should be exhibiting until at least mid-August. Also, Earth’s mightiest heroes will be playing across the globe for the body of 2012 and probably into 2013. And I am far from a hater of the movie.

The opposite is true. I once drove four hours to watch an early screening of Serenity months prior to its actual release. I have also gone so far as to pre-purchase The Avengers 3-D Blu-Ray on Amazon (fyi: Amazon is doing a $5 discount off of whatever the lowest price on its winds up being as long as you order this week). In short, I am one of you, a person awed by Joss Whedon and Marvel’s accomplishments with this project. All of its popularity is amply justified, unlike the usual summer blockbuster garbage such as Transformers.

Still, the reality is that The Avengers doesn’t have another $100 million in it, domestically. We are in its final days as a top five performer. That’s the bad news. The good news is that this movie is still doing solid weekday business. The Avengers finished third yesterday with $2.04 million. This total was just shy of the #2 release, Men in Black 3, which earned $2.73 million. Snow White and the Huntsman, however, earned more than both of them combined with $5.38 million. Until just a couple of weeks ago, The Avengers was the overdog in this regard, but after 32 days in theaters, it is hearing the sound of inevitability.

How much steam does The Avengers have left? Unfortunately, not much. In recent Shop Talk conversations, I had used a few prior early May blockbusters as a comparison model. Those titles are Iron Man, Star Trek and Spider-Man. There were others, but these three have proven to be the best comparisons on the whole. After 32 days in release, Iron Man had earned 87.1% of its final domestic revenue while Star Trek was at 86.8% and Spider-Man was at 88.0%. This paints a picture of where The Avengers stands in the release phase.

If we look at the situation from a slightly different perspective, the total box office dollars remaining, it is that much easier to recognize how long in the tooth The Avengers is. Spider-Man earned $48.4 million after its 32nd day in theaters. The numbers grow much smaller from there. For Iron Man, the remaining total was $41.6 million while Star Trek garnered only $34.1 million. The Avengers will do better because of the difference in scale.

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