While it may seem like Avengers: Infinity War has box office records dropping like flies, that’s because it does. After annihilating the ticket booth when it opened with an unprecedented $250 million-plus earned domestically, the third Avengers installment became the fastest picture to reach $1 billion, doing so in just 11 days.
Astonishingly, the Anthony and Joe Russo-directed movie hadn’t been in theaters two weeks before outstripping seven MCU entries, eclipsing another peer at the domestic box office just the other day: Avengers: Age of Ultron. Now, it’s bested yet another MCU film and this time, it’s Iron Man 3.
Yup, that’s right, Infinity War skittered past the Shane Black-directed picture’s $1.22 billion today, moving into fourteenth place all-time on the worldwide gross list with $1.23 billion. That makes the event movie the fourth highest-grossing superhero pic ever released, trailing only Black Panther ($1.34B), Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1.41B), and The Avengers ($1.52B) worldwide, and The Dark Knight ($534M), The Avengers ($623M), and Black Panther ($693M) domestically. Something tells us Infinity War, currently sitting at $472 million stateside in just 12 days of release, will have no trouble claiming the top spot on both home soil and the global scale when all is said and done.
Regardless of where it’ll finish – analysts expect it to be somewhere between $1.88 billion and $2 billion – Avengers: Infinity War has emerged as the “first summer movie ever to target $2 billion worldwide,” a feat in and of itself.
Even at the low end of the spectrum, $1.88 billion, the film would still become the highest grossing MCU movie ever. That being said, Infinity War still has some ground to cover if it’s to topple The Avengers and/or Black Panther during its theatrical run. With the way things are going, though, don’t be surprised if it does.