Avengers: Endgame has already earned more money in just five days than 17 of the 21 previous films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe did in their entire theatrical run (including Captain Marvel). The Wrap reports that it’s the first time in history a movie has earned over a billion dollars in just its first weekend.

It demolished the record $640,521,291 global box office opening for the previous Avengers movie, Infinity Wars, in 2018. This weekend the sequel earned $1,209,000,000, with both Avengers films earning more than the next-biggest-opening films The Fate of the Furious and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

In fact, “In one fell swoop, Avengers: Endgame has already made more than movies like Skyfall, Aquaman and The Dark Knight Rises grossed in their entire runs, not accounting for inflation,” reports USA Today:

To accommodate demand, Disney released Avengers: Endgame in more theaters (4,662 in the U.S. and Canada) than any opening before. Advance ticketing services set new records. Early ticket buyers crashed AMC’s website. And starting Thursday, some theaters even stayed open 72 hours straight. “We’ve got some really tired staff,” says John Fithian, president and chief executive of the National Association of Theater Owners. “I talked to an exhibitor in Kansas who said, ‘I’ve never sold out a 7 a.m. show on Saturday morning before,’ and they were doing it all across their circuit.”

Not working in the film’s favor was its lengthy three-hour running time. But theaters added thousands of showings for Endgame to get it on more screens than any movie before to satiate the frenzy.

For an industry dogged by uncertainty over the growing role of streaming, the weekend was a mammoth display of the movie theater’s lucrative potency. Fithian calls it possibly “the most significant moment in the modern history of the movie business…. We’re looking at more than 30 million American and more than 100 million global guests that experienced Endgame on the big screen in one weekend,” Fithian says. “The numbers are just staggering….”

Disney now holds all but one of the top 12 box-office openings of all time. (Universal’s Jurassic World is the lone exception…) After its acquisition of 20th Century Fox, Disney is expected to account for at least 40% of domestic box-office revenue in 2019, a new record of market share… The company’s Captain Marvel — positioned as a kind of Marvel lead-in to Endgame — rose to No. 2 in its eighth weekend in theaters.

Comscore reports that the movie accounted for 88% of all ticket sales this weekend — and that the total weekend box office of $400 million was the largest ever. Theatre owners hope this will also mean more ticket sales in the future, with millions of moviegoers exposed to trailers for upcoming films. And whatever happens, “This has got to be the biggest weekend in popcorn history,” a senior media analyst for Comscore told USA Today.

“Think of the gallons of soda and the hot dogs sold!”

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Source:: Slashdot