The comparison between box office dollars and TV ratings has always been apples and oranges, long before the rise of the streaming service mades it even more difficult to determine. There’s no real accurate way to gauge how many viewers tune in to watch the biggest exclusives on the likes of Netflix, HBO Max, Disney Plus and more, with the data usually coming from in-house and broken down into minutes or spread across a period of four weeks as opposed to more traditional metrics.
What we do know for a fact is that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most commercially successful franchise in history, raking in over $22.5 billion globally. That works out to an average of over $982 million, although the numbers range from The Incredible Hulk‘s haul of $264 million to Avengers: Endgame making over ten times as much.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s premiere, meanwhile, scored the most-watched debut of any Disney Plus series so far, and Anthony Mackie is confident that a Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes feature would be able to surpass the earnings of a Tom Holland Spider-Man movie, as he revealed in a new interview.
“There is competition within Marvel. There is competition. I just want to see somebody do an algorithm or figure out if we were in a movie theater how much money we would have made. Because I know it would’ve been more than Tom Holland as Spider-Man!”
For context, Homecoming made $880 million and Far From Home topped out at $1.13 billion, so you can’t help but admire his confidence. The all-powerful algorithm is a favored tool for any streamer to try and determine what’s going to appeal to the widest possible audience, but even though any MCU blockbuster is guaranteed to do big business thanks to the brand’s built-in appeal, it would admittedly be hard to imagine The Falcon and the Winter Soldier managing to out-earn a film headlined by one of pop culture’s most beloved figures.