Disney’s latest alarmingly star-packed Avengers entry is going to set another box-office record for its opening weekend, eclipsing Star Wars: The Force Awakens, according to Variety.
The film is set to bring in around $250 million in its debut domestically, which would put it just ahead of the debut for the first star Wars film in more than a decade. The Force Awakens opening weekend brought in $247.9 million domestically, according to Box Office Mojo, which now also estimates that Infinity War will bring in around $250 million in addition to $380 million internationally.
Infinity War hit $105.9 million in its opening day on Friday, according to Box Office Mojo, which set it at a target just narrowly behind The Force Awakens at the time. But it now appears that stuffing a film to the brim with superheroes that the company has spent nearly a decade fleshing out with individual movies has become a superb strategy and continues to chug along, making Disney’s $4 billion acquisition of the studio look like one of its best strategic moves in the modern era.
“We’ve been a company that has emphasized and is evident in how we have invested our capital the value of high-quality branded entertainment,” CEO Bob Iger said at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference back in February. “And the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm Star Wars, obviously, were a reflection of that core strategy. This gives us a larger portfolio of high-quality branded content. When you think about FX, when you think about National Geographic, when you think about a number of the franchises that Fox has created, including their Marvel franchises and Avatar and other product, we believe that this fits beautifully into the strategy to continue to invest in entertainment, particularly in a world that seems to be growing in terms of its appetite to consume entertainment.”
The next closest films for a debut performance after The Force Awakens are The Last Jedi (unsurprisingly) at around $220 million, followed by Jurassic World at around $209 million, and then the first Avengers film at $207.4 million. Essentially, Disney is cleaning up at the box office and setting records thanks to a number of smart acquisitions — it bought Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in 2012.
Disney still has yet another massive film coming out before the second quarter even ends, with Solo: A Star Wars Story set to come out next month. Marvel’s Black Panther brought in an estimated $688 million domestically, according to Box Office Mojo.