MONDAY UPDATE: The US total was $258.2 million, way higher than originally thought.
SUNDAY: Disney was once a company known for animated movies. No more. Thanks to acquisitions of Marvel and LucasFilms, Disney now holds 8 of the top 10 opening weekends of all time.
“Avengers: Infinity War,” from Marvel, is now the BIGGEST opening weekend ever, beating two “Star Wars” films from LucasFilms. “Infinity War” took in $250 million and is now the all time opening weekend box office take for any movie.
Including all countries worldwide, including theaters in Wakanda, “Infinity War” stands at $630 million since Wednesday.
Only one actual Disney film — last year’s live action “Beauty and the Beast” — is part of that top 10 now.
“Infinity War”– which really should be titled Part 1 — topped “Black Panther”‘s opening weekend by about $42 million. “Black Panther,” which was only released 10 weeks ago, was considered to be a phenomenon as it made its way to number 3 on the all time box office list.
SPOILER ALERT STOP READING NOW
But now the Black Panther himself, T’Challa, is dust in the wind thanks to the shocking ending of “Infinity War” along with several other signature Marvel characters. A bunch of them are turned to gray soot at the end of the movie, with no redemption in sight. Before that even happens, a few others are simply killed the old fashioned way, including Tom Hiddleston’s Loki and Paul Bettany’s Vision.
Ironically, the one Avenger everyone assumed would die– Chris Evans’s Captain America– is just fine, thank you. But his buddy, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) isn’t so lucky.
The death toll is high in “Infinity War, Part 1.” After the credits, two more Marvel heroes become dust including Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury– and this years before he wore an eye patch. Some kind of time travel fix will have to retroactively reboot everyone or Disney-Marvel will suddenly lose its main revenue stream. It could be “Infinity War, Part 2” aka “Avengers 4,” will begin with Bob Iger and Alan Horn visiting a CGI young Stan Lee in the 1960s and breaking all his pencils!
