‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Hits Tracking With The Potential To Open To $200M+
EXCLUSIVE: Disney/Marvel’s Avengers Infinity War arrived on tracking today with numbers that literally indicate the movie could open to $200M-plus, easily on its way to a record April debut. Note this is an industry prediction, not one from Disney. The studio is historically conservative with their projections.
The asterisk here is that when films chart this high on tracking, it becomes hard to predict their opening, and we also have to remind you of the cap that April has: its record $100M-plus weekends of Furious 7 ($147M) and Fate of the Furious ($98.7M) occurred over Easter holiday weekends, while The Jungle Book popped to a $103.2M during the middle of the month. Only 5% K-12 and 4% colleges are off during the April 27-29 opening weekend for Infinity War, but school never stopped the kids from fueling a record weekend at the box office. Furthermore there were slightly more schools on break on Infinity War‘s original weekend of May 4 (2% K-12 and 16% colleges per ComScore).
In unaided awareness, that portion of survey-taking where the person being polled brings up a movie title without being prompted, Infinity War has a huge 42, a score that’s higher than The Force Awakens (36, $247.9M), Black Panther (35, $202M), The Last Jedi (35, $220M), Jurassic World (24, $209M) and Avengers (26, $207M).
Other strong indicators: First choice where Infinity War has an enormous 38 which is also higher than The Force Awakens (22, $247.9M), Black Panther (25, $202M), The Last Jedi (23, $220M), and Jurassic World (17, $209M), and Avengers (21, $207M).
The pent-up anticipation here for Marvel fans is that Infinity War stars the entire universe (sans X-Men) including the newly Sony rebooted Spider-Man Tom Holland.
Back on March 16, Fandango announced that in six hours, advance tickets sales for Infinity War already broke the 24-hour sales records of all previous superhero movies, including Black Panther, which in its first day was outstripping Captain America: Civil War ($179.1M).
Black Panther propelled 2018 to a pace that was faster than 2017 until many intended first quarter event films turned out not to be events, i.e. Tomb Raider, Wrinkle in Time, and Red Sparrow. Though we are close to 4% behind 2017 through April 1 ($2.89B to $3B), no doubt, Infinity War will catch us up.
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