Everybody knew that The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises would do huge business, but could either eventually dethrone Avatar as the #1 movie of all time?
And considering how much money both flicks made, why are the box office reports still grim? Well, let’s take a look at the data.
As Deadline, Collider and Box Office Mojo report, The Dark Knight Rises has made a little over a billion world-wide, but The Avengers is still head of the superhero class. Dark Knight generated some $431 million domestic, while The Avengers made $619 million on US shores and $1.5 billion world-wide.
Yes, The Avengers had a bit of an edge because it costs more to see a movie in 3D, but anticipation was so high before the movie came out, it would have done huge business regardless.
At the same time, The Dark Knight Rises didn’t manage to beat out the domestic gross of the last Batman film, which made $433 million in the States. Still, as Deadline reports, Rises is now #9 on the all time box office domestic chart, and The Avengers is about $40 million away from taking Titanic for #2 biggest b.o. champ of all time domestic as well. (World-wide Avatar and Titanic should hang in there for a while at $2.7 billion and $2.1 billion respectively).
Nevertheless, both the L.A. Times and Variety confirm the summer box office is down from last year, in spite of the enormous success of The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises. The Hollywood Reporter also notes that 533.5 million movie tickets were sold this summer, which is down 4% from last year, “and the worst turnout since 1993.”
Still, there should be plenty more money to be made for The Avengers and Rises on home video, and with Rises doing more business overseas than domestically, it shows how important the foreign market is for movies today. The Reporter also points out that Rises is the 13th film in cinema history to hit a billion dollars world-wide.
The world-wide top ten? From one to ten: Avatar ($2.7 billion), Titanic ($2.1 billion), The Avengers ($1.5 billion), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two ($1.3 billion), Transformers: Dark of the Moon ($1.1 billion), Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ($1.1 billion), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest ($1,066.2 billion), Toy Story 3 ($1,063.2 billion), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ($1,043.9), Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace ($1,023.3 billion).
