“Avengers: Infinity War” passed the $600 million mark domestically this weekend, the second fastest film to ever reach the milestone (26 days); it’s only the 8th film in box office history to hit that mark. While that’s massive, ‘Infinity War’ has been somewhat frontloaded. Given all the competition, “Deadpool 2” in theaters and “Solo: A Star Wars Story” hitting theaters this memorial day weekend, box office pundits are expecting ‘Infinity War’ to tap out around $660 million which would fall about $40 million short from “Black Panther” which is just inches away from hitting $700 million domestically (it’s remarkable to think the biggest superhero team-up film of all time couldn’t catch “Black Panther”). Worldwide, ‘Infinity War’ is at $1.84 billion and is expected to hit the coveted and rare $2 billion mark. That’s your up to the minute box office update.
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Meanwhile, the filmmakers behind the film are still doing press. One of the gripes of ‘Infinity War’ is that some characters, chiefly Captain America and Black Widow, didn’t receive a lot of screen time. Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely addressed this a little bit upon the film’s opening.
“Some of the [characters]… seem to take a little bit of a backseat in this one,” they admitted at the time. “When we did crack them, what we realized was they had far more potential in the movie coming next year, just in terms of how their character would be tested by the story. I will say there is less Steve Rogers and Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) than you might expect in this movie [‘Infinity War’]. Because they are such hard-bitten people, when a threat comes, they stand there and they take the threat. They don’t crack. They don’t whimper. They don’t start talking about all their failed opportunities. So, there isn’t that much to explore, especially when you don’t have a lot of time.”
But they could be front and center and get their due in ‘Avengers 4.’ In recent interviews, the writers reiterated, that if ‘Infinity War’ centered on Tony Stark and Doctor Strange, the second part could focus of Steve Rogers and Natasha.
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“We gave ourselves permission to use both movies to tell complete arcs for the characters,” they told Collider this week. “And that might mean that somebody like Cap or Natasha you might feel like, ‘Oh, they didn’t have as much to do as say Thor or Doctor Strange, and that surprises me.’ It’s likely because they have a lot to do in the next one.”
“We had so many characters in movie 1, and we knew it was a two-movie conversation,” they continued. “Some characters were better served in movie 2 after this event. We were making some choices based on some characters we knew were going to leave us at the end of the first movie, so they got highlighted in the first movie. And some who were going to be in the second movie more maybe got less attention or less screentime [in ‘Infinity War’] — I’m thinking of Cap and Natasha, specifically. It’s about the story we wanted to tell in movie 2, mostly.”
That seems like some heavy confirmation that Steve and Natasha will get the spotlight, but it’ll be interesting if it’s “their” movie in the way ‘Infinity War’ is Tony and Strange’s—of the heroes at least, clearly, it’s Thanos’ movie. Let’s not forget they have to make room for Hawkeye and Ant-Man so it’ll be interesting to see if previous characters from ‘Infinity War’ have to take their turn in the backseat. It’s pretty much common knowledge that this is Chris Evans’ last go at Captain America (at least for now), but with a “Black Widow” film in development, presumably, Scarlett Johansson is sticking around (unless it’s a prequel as rumored).
Meanwhile, they also spoke about why the Netflix Defenders team wasn’t in the film but gave the usual answers of “there were too many heroes” in there as is. But it was interesting of them to address some rumors between the two side of Marvel that is said to be keeping the two worlds separate: “We don’t know anything about animosity [between Marvel Studios and Marvel Television].”
Lastly, Here’s a tiny synopsis for ‘Avengers 4’ that recently “leaked” though there’s not a lot to it other than suggesting more sacrifices and possibly deaths.
“A culmination of 22 interconnected films the fourth installment of the Avengers saga will draw audiences to witness the turning point of this epic journey. Our beloved heroes will truly understand how fragile this reality is and the sacrifices that must be made to uphold it.”
The untitled fourth ‘Avengers’ film arrives in theaters May 2019.