In Avengers: Endgame, Thanos refers to himself and his dastardly actions as an “inevitability.” But he could’ve been describing the financial fate of the film itself.
It seemed indeed inevitable that Endgame would finish the weekend No. 1. The real question was by how much. Could it earn more than the $257.7 million its forebear, Avengers: Infinity War earned last year, giving it the biggest opening weekend ever? Would it obliterate the record, earning perhaps as much as $300 million? Perhaps $315 mil?
Turns out, even those outlandish guesses weren’t nearly outlandish enough. Early returns suggest that Endgame earned a beat-skipping, jaw-dropping, gum-swallowing $350 million in its first weekend of North American action, turning Infinity War’s old record into so much cosmic dust. And according to Box Office Mojo, that record-setting take will likely grow when the receipts are officially tallied later this weekend.
Just how dominant was Endgame? Not only did it best its nearest competitor (fellow Disney/Marvel blockbuster Captain Marvel) by, oh, about $342 million, it earned more than seven times the rest of the box office combined. (The other 44 movies in theaters earned a paltry total of $42.2 million.) It took a month for Captain Marvel—the year’s biggest blockbuster for another day or so—to earn the same amount of money that Endgame collected in just a little over three days.
And we’re only talking about the United States and Canada so far. Look overseas, and Endgame’s numbers get even more ludicrous. It’s already earned $1.2 billion worldwide in its opening frame, almost double the previous record of $640 million (set by Infinity War). And we’ve barely scratched the record surface. According to The Wrap, Endgame has broken 144 box-office records already. By the time we reconvene next week, Disney and Marvel may have earned enough money to buy, say, Switzerland.
Believe it or not, moviegoers did see other things beside Endgame. Captain Marvel held pretty strong in the face of its titanic stablemate, likely because some folks wanted to see it before stepping into Endgame. It earned $8 million, which nudged it ahead of last week’s champ, The Curse of La Llorona ($7.5 million). That means that Linda Cardellini, who plays the terrified mom in La Llorona and Hawkeye’s wife in Endgame, is having a pretty memorable weekend. (So is Brie Larson, of course, who plays Captain Marvel, but that’s kind of a given, right?)
The Christian drama Breakthrough, meanwhile, continues to impress in its own more modest way. It finished fourth with $6.3 million, pushing its total haul to $26.1 million.
Shazam! closes out the week’s top five with $5.5 million, which kinda sorta means that three Captain Marvels had places of honor in the weekend’s five biggest movies.
But for now, most eyes will be on Endgame. The only real question now is, how high will this movie’s box office go?
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