This week, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” will pass “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” as the highest-grossing film in the history of the U.S. box office before inflation adjustment. But it may not be long before fellow Marvel Studios’ blockbuster “Avengers: Doomsday” takes that crown, as it has now passed $50 million in box office presales three months before its release.
The milestone was announced by Disney Senior EVP and Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference.
“We’re three months out from the movie, and we already have $50 million of presales, literally three months out. So there is a ton of thirst and excitement within that fan base to see another ‘Avengers’ movie,” Johnston said as he touted Disney’s slate, which also includes sequels to “The Incredibles” and “Frozen,” as well as “Avengers: Secret Wars” in 2027 and ’28.
Disney also noted that 70% of the advance tickets sold so far have been for premium formats marked with the Infinity Vision label, a marketing campaign devised by Disney to guide Marvel fans to PLFs outside of Imax, which will be exclusively screening “Dune: Part Three” on its screens in December.
Several years of inconsistency for Marvel Studios at the box office and with fan reception have been erased in a matter of weeks between the hype for “Doomsday” and the wild success of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” which has grossed more than $2.4 billion worldwide since Sony Pictures released it at the end of July and is now the third-highest-grossing film of all time before inflation.
Off of that hype, the July trailer for “Doomsday” has become Disney’s most-viewed trailer in history, and fans have flooded Disney+ to get caught up on the MCU before the film hits theaters in December. Disney reports that a record 420 million hours of viewing on Disney+ was recorded for Marvel Studios titles in August, a lift of more than 200 million hours.
With “Dune: Part Three” and other early holiday holdovers available to theaters, there will be only so much space multiplexes will be able to devote to “Avengers: Doomsday” compared to “Avengers: Endgame,” which saw some multiplexes fill nearly all of their screens to meet the opening weekend demand in 2019. Still, if this hype continues to build, “Doomsday” could challenge the $360 million domestic opening weekend record achieved by “Brand New Day” this past summer and possibly the $1.2 billion global opening record held by “Endgame.”
“Avengers: Doomsday” hits theaters on Dec. 18.
