Can you hear that rumbling in the distance? It’s getting louder by the day.
Of course, we’re talking about the impending cinematic juggernaut that is Avengers: Infinity War, which is looking set to obliterate all manner of box office records and turn profits for Disney and Marvel Studios that’d make King Midas blush. Yesterday, we reported that the film was in line to have an opening weekend in the $200 million range, and just one day later, that’s now been raised to an eye-watering $225 million by the numbers experts at BoxOffice.com.
If these projections bear out, the pic’s on route to haul in a total of $586 million over its domestic run, while international sales will take it well over the milestone $1 billion before too long, with the film set to find its place amongst the very highest earners in cinema history like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Jurassic World and Avatar. It’ll be interesting, as well, to see whether it can topple its stablemates within the MCU, with The Avengers and Age of Ultron currently sitting pretty at number 5 and 7 in the all-time box office top ten, respectively.
Something working in Infinity War’s favor is that it’s such a big film that it’s scared off most of its competition, with three clear weeks before the release of Deadpool 2 on May 18th (its R rating also means that it’s not in direct competition with Avengers 3 for family audiences). That Black Panther succeeded beyond all projections should give the film a boost, too, with Marvel Studios pushing T’Challa and Wakanda pretty hard in the marketing and no doubt hoping that the audiences who flocked to that will turn up to this (though Warner Bros. assumed that Justice League would get a Wonder Woman boost and look where that got them).
With the April 27th release date growing ever closer, expect hype for Avengers: Infinity War to reach white-hot proportions. Until then, feel free to drop us a comment with your thoughts on how high the film will climb at the box office.