(5 minute read)
"Whatever it takes"... to get to $2+ billion.
How much money do we think Avengers: Endgame is going to make? It's breaking ticket reservation sites...making fans cry with excitement...the actors haven't even seen the movie yet to spoil anything.
I can't even book a decent IMAX ticket until early May after its release on April 26th, and I don't feel like compromising for a front row 2D movie ticket for this 3-hour epic.
After all, it's been over 10 years. Our world has been blessed by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the largest movie franchise in cinema history, and we take it for granted year after year.
According to a Statista report, the MCU has made $18.4 billion in worldwide box office revenue and is still growing. The next highest grossing franchise is Star Wars at just about half that, $9.3 billion, followed by Harry Potter at $9.2 billion. Even when adjusted for inflation, the MCU is still top dog.
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This last estimate is new and might be my final and preferred answer. It's more conservative and only takes into account the latest top 20 superhero films based on global revenue rank.
I had to remove Deadpool (2016) because at a small $58 million estimated budget, it generated a stupid $783 million global revenue, making it a significant outlier, so I replaced it with the next biggest hit - Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).
See below for the new graph.
So there you go, my predictions! We'll revisit this post later when the results come out and see how accurate they really were.
"Whatever it takes"... to get to $2+ billion.
How much money do we think Avengers: Endgame is going to make? It's breaking ticket reservation sites...making fans cry with excitement...the actors haven't even seen the movie yet to spoil anything.
I can't even book a decent IMAX ticket until early May after its release on April 26th, and I don't feel like compromising for a front row 2D movie ticket for this 3-hour epic.
After all, it's been over 10 years. Our world has been blessed by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the largest movie franchise in cinema history, and we take it for granted year after year.
According to a Statista report, the MCU has made $18.4 billion in worldwide box office revenue and is still growing. The next highest grossing franchise is Star Wars at just about half that, $9.3 billion, followed by Harry Potter at $9.2 billion. Even when adjusted for inflation, the MCU is still top dog.
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A while back I had a post on the most profitable superhero (DC/Marvel-only) films to date, so I used that data for this exercise. Infinity War grossed over $2 billion in global revenue and made a $1.7 billion dollar profit with its $321 million estimated budget.
Endgame will most likely turn out to have a similar budget estimate. The Numbers reports on estimated movie production budgets to be as high as $425 mil from Avatar (2009).
Given all this, let's use $400 mil as a baseline for how much it cost Marvel Studios to produce Avengers: Endgame.
Budget: $400 mil
Now onto the revenue. Opening weekend is great and all, but I want to know the end result by the end of 2019.
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Estimate 1: $2,500,000,000.01 Worldwide Revenue
Profit: $2.1 Billion (Wild Guess)
Profit: $2.1 Billion (Wild Guess)
This first estimate is going to be a shot in the dark. Infinity War made roughly $2 billion worldwide, so let's add another half a billion to that because it sounds nice. At $2.5 billion, this movie will easily surpass Infinity War for most profitable superhero film ever and turn out a $2.1 billion PROFIT.
Estimate 2: $2,599,560,000.00 Worldwide Revenue
Profit: $2.2 Billion (Using Budget as a predictor and leaving only Avengers films on the table)
Profit: $2.2 Billion (Using Budget as a predictor and leaving only Avengers films on the table)
This second estimate has some more substance to it. Below is a simple graph that plots 42 different Marvel and DC Superhero movies. It's not the best prediction nor the best predictive model, only 31% of this data can be explained by that line. And with a $400 million budget, this model only predicts $1.68 billion in revenue. Thats way too low for a movie like this.
To keep it simple, what if we only kept the last four "Avengers" films?
1) The Avengers
2) Avengers: Age of Ultron
3) Captain America: Civil War
4) Avengers Infinity War
1) The Avengers
2) Avengers: Age of Ultron
3) Captain America: Civil War
4) Avengers Infinity War
Below we get a very simplified model with only 4 relevant data points.
Yes there's only four data points, but there's a good reason to use this model over the last one. These four films are more likely to predict Endgame's performance because they're the most SIMILAR. A small sample is not ideal but for a simple exercise like this, let's try it out.
After all, we shouldn't be using DC's Justice League (2017) to predict Marvel's Avengers, when the latter has enjoyed much more repeated success. While we should take this prediction with a grain of salt, it's the simplest and easiest to explain with more relevant data.
After all, we shouldn't be using DC's Justice League (2017) to predict Marvel's Avengers, when the latter has enjoyed much more repeated success. While we should take this prediction with a grain of salt, it's the simplest and easiest to explain with more relevant data.
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Estimate 3: $2,371,960,000.00 Worldwide Revenue
Profit: $1.97 Billion (Using Budget as a predictor and keeping only the top 20 superhero films)
Profit: $1.97 Billion (Using Budget as a predictor and keeping only the top 20 superhero films)
This last estimate is new and might be my final and preferred answer. It's more conservative and only takes into account the latest top 20 superhero films based on global revenue rank.
I had to remove Deadpool (2016) because at a small $58 million estimated budget, it generated a stupid $783 million global revenue, making it a significant outlier, so I replaced it with the next biggest hit - Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).
See below for the new graph.
Some of the films used for the above graph include Black Panther, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Dark Knight, all the Avengers, & Thor: Ragnarok.
So there you go, my predictions! We'll revisit this post later when the results come out and see how accurate they really were.