It won't open until next weekend in America, but much of the worldwide movie going community got their initial sampling of Walt Disney's Avengers: Age of Ultron starting late last week, and it has already crossed the $200 million mark overseas. The much-anticipated comic book superhero sequel debuted on April 22nd and expanded through the week into around 55% of its would-be worldwide market. It earned $9.5 million in total on its first day and it upped its total to $44.8 million worldwide heading into the weekend. It will expand to most of the rest of the world over the next week, with high profile debuts in America on May 1st, China on May 12th, and Japan on July 4th. And with the first extended weekend accounted for, the $250 million production has earned $201.2 million worldwide. By the way, it earned $10.7m of that in IMAX, netting the company's biggest overseas "not with China" debut ever.
The first Avengers earned $185.1 million over its pre-US overseas debut three years ago in 39 foreign territories which represented a bigger piece of the worldwide pie. Like most of the Marvel debuts, the film held off the would-be biggies (China, America, and Japan) although Russia was included in the initial offering this time around. Iron Man 3 earned $198m in its first overseas weekend, which is now the 12th-biggest overseas debut on record. This one is superb, but not any kind of record breaker. It sits between The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part II ($199m) and Transformers: Age of Extinction ($202m) as the tenth-biggest global debut of all time. In terms of comparative performances in respective territories, that's a 44% uptick from The Avengers. There are a couple things to note.
First of all, as you may be aware, there has been an issue with currency deflation overseas over the last several months which has resulted in lower grosses for overseas films. For example, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is stuck at $955m worldwide when it surely would have crossed the $1 billion mark had it been working with a less-mighty US dollar as was the case even in late 2012 with An Unexpected Journey. Secondly, and this is why overseas openings are hard to compare, but some films on the list (like Breaking Dawn 2) basically opened in every major market straight out of the gate.
Also of note, The Avengers earned $86 million in China back in 2012. Call me crazy, but I think we can assume that Avengers: Age of Ultron will make quite a bit more than $86m in China this time around. For example, Iron Man 2 earned a whole $7m in China over the 2010 summer movie season while Iron Man 3 earned $121m back in 2013. Yes studios get less of each individual ticket sale from China compared to other markets, but the market has exploded over the last few years. So point being, whatever it makes in China may-well make up for any (wholly theoretical) downshifts in domestic or overseas totals in respective markets this time around, be it due to deflation or a slight lessening of interest.
The original Avengers opened in most of its territories by the end of its second weekend (when it smashed the US opening weekend record and debuted in China and Russia), and it opened with $207m in America and an additional $157m overseas and brought its worldwide cume to $641m worldwide at the end of its twelfth day. But in terms of the initial overseas debuts for the recent Marvel movies have ranged anywhere from 24%-29% of the overseas total (Iron Man 3 and Iron Man 2) to just 15%-16% of the overseas total (Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy). The Avengers earned 20% of its $895m overseas cume in its first weekend of release. Of note, Furious 7 just passed $960m overseas to become the biggest non-James Cameron overseas box office champion ever. So let's not go nuts and send up white flags if Avengers: Age of Ultron doesn't quite top that eye-popping total, although again I think China and Japan are huge wild cards and it will surely make more in America than Furious 7's likely $360m+ domestic final.
Let's play "fun with math" and say that Avengers 2 again snagged 20% of its overseas total, meaning that it will get to $1 billion overseas. But substitute that $86m China total for a $186m China total (very speculative, I know), and that gets you $1.1b overseas along with a (again speculative) $215m domestic debut and 2.4x weekend-to-final multiplier (think Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, and Thor 2) for an over/under $515m domestic total which gives the film a $1.615b total just ahead of the first one. Or worst case scenario (sequel front-loading and all), it has earned 29% of its overseas money this weekend with somewhat less of a China uptick and doesn't quite open as big in America. So, and again, this is fun with math here, $693m -$86m + $143m = $750m overseas, plus $450m domestic ($200m debut x 2.25x) = $1.2b worldwide.
So even accounting for some (comparatively) negative scenarios, this one is going to be pretty huge and said $200m debut offers a reasonable scenario for $2b worldwide (if it plays like Guardians of the Galaxy here and abroad in terms of legs). Comparisons and predictions in terms of overseas debuts are challenging and more speculative than I'm comfortable with due to the ever-changing overseas box office marketplace and the different release patterns of different movies. But as long as we all admit that this is all just me looking at the precedent and having fun with my calculator (and China could easily go nuts this time around), then it's all good. We'll have a better picture once next weekend ends since we'll have the US debut and most of the worldwide market accounted for. And for the record, if Avengers: Age of Ultron "only" makes $750m overseas and "only" makes $450m domestic and thus "only" makes $1.2b worldwide, I will smack anyone who calls it a flop or even a disappointment.
