Avengers: Endgame's record-breaking preview screenings forecast a lucrative weekend for Marvel
After breaking a bunch of pre-sale records (and ticketing websites), Avengers: Endgame has plucked yet another feather for its helmet. As Variety reports, the Marvel tentpole scooped up $60 million of your hard-earned dollars in its Thursday preview showings. That makes it the top domestic preview of all time, dethroning Star Wars: The Force Awakens and causing J.J. Abrams to tear off his glasses and furiously rub his temples.
The Force Awakens nabbed just $57 million in 2015, and that was for the first proper Star Wars movie in 16 years. Credit anticipation, obviously, but also momentum, as it’s basically inertia guiding us to the theater at this point. Endgame is also cleaning up globally, having taken in $305 million in its first two days of global release in 46 markets. It also set an opening day record in China, where it pulled in $107 million.
“Everything about this movie is unprecedented and though conventional wisdom and logic would dictate that a three-hour movie could never generate these types of numbers, audience demand and a huge boost from theater owners happy to run the film around the clock have made the impossible possible,” Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst with Comscore, told Variety.
We’ll be back on Monday to squint at the numerous zeroes trailing behind its opening weekend numbers, but all signs point to it surpassing Infinity War, which is currently North America’s opening weekend champ with its $257.7 million pull.
What’s also neat? It’s good!