Disney’s latest Avengers film has smashed box-office records on its opening weekend taking $1.2bn (£1bn) and is on track to overtake Avatar as the highest-grossing film of all time.
Avengers: Endgame took a record $350m in the world’s biggest movie market, North America, smashed records for a foreign film in China, and grossed more than any other film on its opening weekend globally.
The star-studded film is the first to take more than $1bn on its debut. Avatar, released in 2009, currently holds the record for highest-grossing film with $2.79bn worldwide. At the very least, Avengers: Endgame will almost certainly surpass Titanic, the 1997 blockbuster starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, which ranks as the second biggest film of all time, taking $2.19bn globally.
Avengers: Endgame review – unconquerable brilliance takes Marvel to new heights
5 out of 5 stars.
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The success of the film is a timely reminder that Disney’s upcoming streaming service, Disney+, has the content firepower to challenge global market leader Netflix despite its late entry. Avengers: Endgame is one of many golden properties that will debut exclusively on the service, which launches later this year, before being released elsewhere. Disney has already pulled all of its content from Netflix in the US, ahead of a likely global pullout, costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing revenue in order to make its service a must-buy. In the US, subscriptions to Disney+ will be priced at $6.99 a month, just over half the monthly cost of Netflix, with a global rollout beginning next year.