Well, we all knew Avengers: Endgame was going to have a good weekend. You can't mix this much hype with really good reviews and spectacular word of mouth and expect the buzz to die down after one weekend. Avengers: Endgame was winning this weekend. The question was just by how much. Well, the results are in, and the answer is by a lot. Avengers: Endgame did more than 10X the business of its nearest competitor The Intruder which came in a very, very distant second.
You can check out the full results of the weekend box office below, including how newcomers Longshot, UglyDolls and The Intruder stacked up...
So, let's finish out the Avengers conversation before we move on. The film is on pace to surpass $2 billion at the worldwide box office by the end of this weekend. That's absolutely incredible, and everyone involved with the MCU, especially the Russo Brothers who are on this week's ReelBlend, and this movie in particular should applaud themselves. Not only did they create a movie that's playing really well with fans, they somehow created one that's surpassing the crazy numbers put up by Infinity War. Spectacular. Hard stop.
Now, the key here is following Endgame, observers need to adjust their expectations for future Marvel movies. This was, in my ways, the end of an era. There are numerous characters in the MCU that we'll almost certainly never see again. It took a decade of churning out a lot of really good movies that built on top of each other in order to generate this excitement. Now, it's not like the MCU is starting from scratch, but the engine really needs to be restarted and the momentum needs to go in a new direction. So, expectations will continue to be very high, but we should be comparing those future movies against some of Marvel's other offerings... not against Endgame.
After Endgame, it was basically a three way fight for second place among the week's newest movies. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have predicted The Intruder to come out on top, but with disappointing openings from the Seth Rogen/ Charlize Theron comedy Long Shot, as well as the new animated feature UglyDolls, that second place was wide open for the taking. I'm not sure we'll really learn anything from this Long Shot result. The comedy romance is a bit of a departure from what we're used to from both lead actors. As such, we'll probably see both return toward what's comfortable, and given this will likely do well streaming and probably didn't cost that much to make, it's kind of a net neutral. As for UglyDolls, it was relatively cheap to make for an animated movie ($45M), but it's going to be a long road to get to profitability here. Consequently, we may see STX hold off on any animated features in the near future.
Finally, quick shoutouts are in order to both Little and Breakthrough, which just keep rolling. Both films are clearly filling voids in what's being offered right now, and we'll likely continue to see productions like these pop up in order to fill those gaps. Not everyone wants to see the same stuff, and the wider variety as an audience we can get, the healthier the movie industry will be.
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