While it probably will.
Every MCU movie had a respectable box office haul for a Hollywood blockbuster, and a good number of the franchise’s installments have gone above and beyond the numbers required to turn a profit and left record-setting figures in their dust. So, here are the 10 most impressive box office records broken by movies in the MCU.
Highest-Grossing Solo Superhero Film
Out of 23 installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just four of them have been Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight movies (not to mention the unexpected success of the DCEU’s Wonder Woman and Aquaman).
But the MCU still holds the record for highest-grossing solo superhero film with Black Panther’s worldwide box office haul of $1.3 billion.
Highest-Grossing Movie Released By Walt Disney Studios
It’s no secret that their crazy “cinematic universe” experiment might actually work.
The studio’s acquisition of Marvel’s film branch started paying off immediately when The Avengers became the highest-grossing movie released by Walt Disney Studios. The MCU has since topped its own record in this department a couple of times.
Biggest Opening Weekend For An IMAX Release
The record for biggest opening weekend for an IMAX release was set by Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises with an impressive haul of $23.8 million.
However, three years later, a new record was set by Avengers: Age of Ultron’s $25.2 million, despite the movie’s opening-weekend numbers being hurt by Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao’s much-hyped boxing match.
Highest Monday Gross In North America
In the streaming age, movie studios have a hard time getting audiences into theaters as it is, but it’s always been tough to get people to see movies on a Monday.
And yet, Black Panther was such a huge cultural landmark that it set a new record for the highest Monday gross in North American box office history with $40.15 million.
Highest Weekend Per-Theater Average For A Wide Release Adjusted For Inflation
It’s easy to break a decades-old box office record when you don’t adjust for inflation, because the changing value of the U.S. dollar means that movie tickets keep costing more and more as time goes on. But Avengers: Endgame broke a record adjusted for inflation that had been held by Return of the Jedi for almost 40 years.
With 8,502 tickets sold, Endgame had the highest weekend per-theater average for a wide release adjusted for inflation. Return of the Jedi’s previous record was 7,293 tickets.
Highest-Grossing Film By A Black Director
The MCU’s early movies were lacking in the diversity department — mostly thanks to the notorious former boss Ike Perlmutter putting the kibosh on Black Panther and Captain Marvel movies, even nixing a female villain from Iron Man 3 — but the franchise’s more recent efforts have been working to fix that.
Marvel recruited African-American filmmaker Ryan Coogler to bring T’Challa to the big screen, and with a groundbreaking $1.3 billion gross, Black Panther became the highest-grossing movie ever by a black director.
Highest Opening Week Gross
By acquiring Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, and Pixar, as well as pumping out their own self-produced blockbusters, Disney’s biggest competitor at the box office is often itself.
Avengers: Endgame set the record for highest opening week gross with $473 million, topping the record set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens with a $390 million opening week.
Biggest Opening Weekend Of All Time
Although filmmakers themselves beg to differ, Hollywood insists that the opening weekend is the most important time in a movie’s life. In its opening weekend, Avengers: Infinity War beat The Fate of the Furious’ record-setting $541 million haul with $640 million.
And then, a year later, Endgame almost doubled Infinity War’s $640 million with a whopping $1.223 billion opening weekend.
Fastest Movie To Gross $1 Billion
This is another case of Marvel breaking its own record. Avengers: Endgame broke a bunch of its predecessor Infinity War’s “Fastest movie to gross...” records. In three days, Endgame broke Infinity War’s five-day “Fastest to $500 million” record.
In five days, it broke Infinity War’s 11-day “Fastest to $1 billion” record. In eight days, it broke Infinity War’s 18-day “Fastest to $1.5 billion” record. And in 11 days, it broke Avatar’s 47-day “Fastest to $2 billion” record.
Highest-Grossing Movie Of All Time
It goes without saying that the most impressive box office record broken by the MCU is ending Avatar’s 11-year reign as the highest-grossing movie of all time. It was always going to take a special kind of movie to beat Avatar, and as the culmination of over a decade of storytelling that captured the zeitgeist in a truly unprecedented way, Avengers: Endgame was that special kind of movie.
As Endgame neared the end of its theatrical run, breaking Avatar’s $2.789 billion record didn’t seem to be within reach, but Disney re-released it with some arbitrary bonus features tagged on the end. Ultimately, Endgame managed to make it to a record-breaking $2.797 billion haul.
