Just about a month ago, we reported that some box office analysts thought that “Avengers: Endgame” could hit the coveted $1 billion mark after its first weekend. The previous opening weekend record was held by “Avengers: Infinity War,” with $640 million. Obviously, for ‘Endgame’ to reach $1 billion during that time period, it’ll have to do a lot better. And judging by the first day’s box office stats overseas, it is doing a lot better already.
THR is reporting that the first-day sales overseas for “Avengers: Endgame” reached a record $169 million, in only a fraction of the territories that the film will be appearing in this weekend. Now, what makes this number even more impressive, especially when thinking about the $1 billion milestone, is that $107 million of that number came from China’s first day sales (with reports that its made $148 million in less than 48 hours), which is already a record for the Middle Kingdom. That means that there’s a chance that China could do well over $300 million during its opening, which would be over $100 million more than ‘Infinity War’ did during its Chinese debut.
Yes, that’s a lot of numbers to throw out at once, so let’s really take a look at what it means.
First, the big difference between ‘Infinity War’s’ global opening and the one for ‘Endgame’ is that China is representing for the latter. ‘Infinity War’ didn’t open in China until after the rest of the world, so the $640 million record is without the extra $200 million last year’s film wasn’t able to include from China. That means, if you want an apples-to-apples comparison, if ‘Endgame’ simply does exactly what ‘Infinity War’ did last year, the new film’s opening weekend will be roughly $840 million. That means, these record-breaking first day numbers seem to indicate that ‘Endgame’ is going to far outpace ‘Infinity War,’ making $1 billion seem like even more of a possibility.
For box office geeks, like myself, these are numbers that many would have thought impossible just a year ago. But here we are. The impossible is rapidly becoming a reality.