Avengers: Endgame marks a historic and climatic end to the first decade of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, serving as the epic follow-up to
Avengers: Infinity War. While details about the film are few and far between due to a high-level secrecy thanks to the Russo Brothers, we now have a sense of the impact the movie will make at the box office when it roars into theaters worldwide at the end of April.
According to early box office tracking from research firm Exhibitor Relations, the 22nd MCU release is expected to be another blockbuster event from Marvel and could potentially smash box office records with an astounding $282 million opening weekend in North America. This estimate is a 9 percent increase from
Infinity War, which made $258 million domestically over the course of its first weekend - the current record for North America.
If this estimate holds true when
Endgame is released and the film is able to maintain a 9 percent increase above
Infinity War throughout the entire duration of its global box office run, then it could end up grossing around $2.2 billion dollars when all is said and done, coming in second place on the list of all-time highest grossing films.
Jeff Block, senior analyst for Exhibitor Relations, stated that
Infinity War, "
left audiences with a cinematic cliffhanger" and, at this point, the only thing that could negatively affect
Endgame's opening weekend "
would be a running time that exceeded three hours." Disney has yet to confirm the length of the film but a runtime exceeding three hours would result in fewer available showtimes.
See the figure below, courtesy of
Bloomberg, for how this first estimate of
Avengers: Endgame's box office performance compares to the four current highest domestic opening weekend hauls.