After taking the US box office by absolute storm last weekend, to the tune of a record-breaking $207.4m. in its opening weekend, The Avengers is now the first film to break the $1bn. threshold in 2012 with an estimated $1.002bn., increasing the membership of the billion-dollar club to 12.
The 3D re-release of The Phantom Menace tipped that over the edge to end with $1.026bn., taking an extra $100m. with the added dimension.
And if estimates are right – and last weekend, the estimates actually fell short by about $4m., so these figures could be even better – our predictions earlier this year have been proven right, with The Avengers set to be the first film of 2012 to go from zero to a billion, doing it in just nineteen days, and playing in the US (naturally its biggest market) for just ten of those days.
It’s estimated that the film took $103m. in the US over the last three days, which itself is a record-breaking figure, the first ever film to take more than a hundred million dollars in its second weekend – by comparison, Spider-Man was the first ever film to top $100m. in its opening weekend back in 2002.
The nineteen days that it’s taken for Joss Whedon’s The Avengers to take a billion matches the same number that it took Avatar and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.
At the time of writing, The Avengers currently stands eleventh of the twelve members in the club, ahead of The Dark Knight, which took $1.001bn.
But given that it’s only had ten days in the US so far, and that it continues to dominate the box office, beating the opening weekend of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, it’s fair to assume that we can expect it to climb much higher in the list over the next few weeks.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is currently in fifth place with $1.119bn., behind Transformers: Dark of the Moon in fourth with $1.123bn., which in turn is behind the final Harry Potter instalment in third with $1.328bn. Exactly where The Avengers will finally land remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t put it past it at all to beat out Harry Potter for the bronze medal.
To catch up on our coverage of the film over the past year, you can click right here.
Source: Disney
