Avengers: Endgame is the culmination of a hugely profitable series of films that began with Iron Man in 2008. It makes sense that the opening weekend of the concluding chapter — which also happens to be a very good movie with a 96 percent critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes — would make a lot of money. But if there’s a place in box office coverage for “whoa, Nellie” anymore, it is perhaps here. And so let us say: Whoa, Nellie.
It’s already made an estimated one billion dollars around the world. Well, $1.2 billion, actually. So, you know. Big. Even for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its gargantuan hauls, this was a gargantuan haul.
Just how big was opening weekend, domestically? Well, Thursday night previews earned $60 million, which is more money than all but 11 2019 films have made in their entire runs. The weekend as a whole is estimated at $350 million, which makes it — per Disney’s eager press release breaking down everything but the inevitable popcorn shortage — the first film to ever make $300 million on opening weekend. Friday, it had the biggest single day for any film ever, making $156.7 million in one day. It also had the biggest Saturday ever and the biggest Sunday ever. This is all in spite of the disadvantage of being three hours long, which might limit the number of showings — except that it’s being shown at a record-breaking 4,662 theaters. It’s an opening weekend that beat the last Avengers film, Avengers: Infinity War, by more than $100 million.
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