Highest, Furthest, Fastest — Projecting the Final Gross of 'Avengers: Endgame'

Blazing a trail that turned all opening records to dust, the unprecedented Avengers: Endgame has shocked the industry. And the discourse on just how close it can come to topping the domestic and/or worldwide total records has begun in earnest; for reference, those marks are The Force Awakens’ $933.7M and James Cameron’s Avatar with $2.788B, respectively. Can the 22nd MCU film catch either? I mentioned the possibility in my weekend write-up, and honestly, it does seem like there’s a very solid chance Endgame can fly past both. The domestic record is likely to be the more difficulty one. If it falls then the global record total will as well, while the reverse would potentially not hold true.

So what kind of numbers are we looking at? It’s a dicey proposition because of the level Endgame is playing at and the fantastic word of mouth that audience reception metrics are offering, so there is a massive range for this picture. I’ll try my best to not only project out Endgame’s next seven days, but all to give an accurate final domestic and worldwide projection. Looking at how its predecessor played is enlightening, along with other mega openers. It’s historically common for films that see huge Sunday business to follow that up with great a Monday decline, as moviegoers that could not catch the film at an ideal time will go the next day and beyond. Infinity War declined 64.3%, and I expect its followup to do even better given its mindblowing $90.4M Sunday gross, so a drop around 60% seems to be in the cards (while Endgame did not quite match the Sunday decline of Infinity War, 17.3% vs. 15.7%, I would chock this up to there simply being a limit on the number of people will to go to a three hour film the night before a workday). From there, I largely expect it to follow a similar trajectory with a few differences: we’ve seen that discount ticket prices on Tuesday that accounts for gigantic increases act as a sink on films playing at a certain—there’s not much room for more seats to be sold, not to mention all those expensive IMAX and PLF formats—and Tuesday has become an even more popular day this year, so I see a bigger decline (sounds paradoxical, I know). Additionally, I’d expect a larger Wednesday decline too, along with a smaller Saturday increase as that have a tendency to be lower the higher the number is (compare Infinity War with Black Panther, for instance). Worldwide, I am indeed going to go the distance and say Avatar near ten year record is going down; with the great word of mouth plus a holiday in many countries on Tuesday, the global cume has a great chance at breaking $2 billion on Sunday.

	Gross	Decline	Total
Monday	$35.7M	-60.5%	$392.8M
Tuesday	$32.3M	-9.5%	$425.1M
Wednesday	$22.3M	-31.0%	$447.4M
Thursday	$20.3M	-9.0%	$467.7M
Friday	$40.9M	+101.5%	$508.6M
Saturday	$57.4M	+40.34%	$566.0M
Sunday	$45.1M	-21.4%	$611.1M
Second Weekend	$143.4M	-59.9%
Domestic Total			$880M
Worldwide Total			$2.850B

Note that it’s possible we’ll see the Monday number get completely blown out of the water with something potentially as high as $40M, which would be a virtual tie with the current record (Black Panther’s President’s Day assisted $40.2M first Monday), in which case I’d probably bet money on this taking down The Force Awakens, as the second weekend record ($149.2M from TFA) would likely fall. In that event, even the December holiday assistance would be unlikely to keep the superhero juggernaut at bay. And if you are wondering, the opposite case of an underwhelming Monday is very unlikely to happen, with presales both domestic and abroad and looking gigantic today.

I must confess that, as (obviously) a box office enthusiast, this is the sort of run I and others like me live to witness. I could be wildly wrong—hell, just look at how off the mark my relatively optimistic predictions for the weekend were—and we could see either over $3B worldwide or see it top out at “only” 2.5. It’s the surprises that make this entire hobby so fun.