Opening weekends and overall movie grosses are the horse races of the geek world. We may not necessarily bet on them, but we’re all looking to see who wins and we all have our favorites in the running. The first box office juggernaut of the year was Furious 7, a nitrous oxide powered behemoth of a film that opened at $147 million and at present as earned more than 1.3 billion worldwide. It’s also worth noting that about $1 billion of that money came from overseas.
So, will the Avengers be able to top that?
Unquestionably, yes.
Why do you say that?
Because it already has. If you look at the box office returns for the first Avengers film, it earned 1.5 Billion in 2012. While Furious 7 is still taking in money, it’s still behind at 1.3 Billion.
But how is Age of Ultron tracking?
Age of Ultron recently opened overseas in 44 markets. Box Office Mojo is tracking its numbers, reporting that its earned an impressive $201.2 million from the get go. It’s also reporting that in almost all those markets, it earned more than The Avengers and Iron Man 3.
What about the United States?
The first Avengers film opened to an impressive $207 million its first weekend. According to Deadline, Age of Ultron is estimated to have a $210 – $230 million opening weekend. Just to reiterate, Furious 7 opened at 147 million.
So…
Age of Ultron is almost certain to beat out both its predecessor and Furious 7. Though Furious 7 may make a bit more overseas, Avengers is almost guaranteed to make much more domestically. Even the first film’s domestic take ($623.4 million) almost doubled Furious 7 ($321.2 million). At the end of the day, however, both films have already proven very successful. Furious 7 has made over a billion and Age of Ultron is sure to join the club. Whoever wins the race to the most money may have the title, but they’re both winners in the eyes of Disney and Universal.
And, let’s face it, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is probably going to beat them both anyway.
Hi! Just wanted to say you were unquestionably wrong.
Let’s run a Star Wars: TFA estimate to see how if could easily beat Ultron (which at this point should top out around $1.4b worldwide). TFA is likely to get the December and Star Wars series opening weekend domestic record easily. Hobbit had $84m. Sith had $108m in May, and Hunger Games and Furious 7 proved you can get massive summer like openings in the off season. An opening on the 18th means all young people are on vacation, and the Disney marketing machine is unstoppable. A $125m opening weekend seems very reasonable. During the winter holidays weekdays are huge, so openings typically yield a 4 multiplier for any film that is of decent quality (even ones that suck, often), and can go much higher (see: Avatar). The legs on the prequels were all pretty good, and those films were pretty terrible to sit through. It’s hard to imagine TFA pulling less than $500m. As for foreign, the prequels usually broke about 45/55 domestic/foreign. With the expansion in China, Russia, and other markets the split is much more likely to be around 35/65. The foreign take should be about $900m under that logic, though I have a hard time imagining Universal can push Furious 7 to well over a billion overseas and Disney can’t do it with Star Wars. But conservatively, you’re looking at $1.4 billion and a tie with Ultron. If you take a less conservative but still quite reasonable approach, say for a good film with good word of mouth, you get to $600m off that opening (a manageable 4.8 multiplier–Sith had 4.6 despite a lot of flaws, poor word of mouth, and two lackluster predecessors). Foreign would be $1.1 billion, and worldwide $1.7 billion.
As soon as Ultron had that first Saturday gross in North America, I knew it would not match Furious 7 worldwide. The China earnings were just too jaw dropping for Furious 7, and Marvel has never been especially amazing there (the peak was Iron Man 3 with $121m). It needed to pull $500m domestic to claim an outright victory, and that was never going to happen off a $190m, front-loaded weekend. Right now it looks like Furious 7 will top out around $1.52 billion, basically tying the first Avengers, with about $350m from North America. Ultron is likely to end with just $425m domestic and, if it’s lucky, a billion overseas. I don’t see it earning much more than $300m in China, and would guess $225m is a more realistic ceiling. In Japan it might pull another $40m if it does really well. The absolute best from both markets would be $350m, which might just get it to the $1.5 billion club. But a more realistic scenario is $250m from China and Japan and another $150m or so from remaining markets, including domestic, totaling $1.4 billion. Not shabby, but it’s about half a billion off most predictions I had read.
lmao, as much as I love Star Wars, it will NOT do better than Age of Ultron. ESPECIALLY with a winter release.