Avengers: Endgame surges past $2 billion, sinks Titanic

A week after becoming the fastest film to gross more than $1 billion worldwide, Avengers: Endgame has passed the $2 billion mark, as well as Titanic for No. 2 all time.

Sure to fall next is No. 1 Avatar, which did $2.7 billion in 2009. Avengers: Endgame is roughly $500 million behind that but also is barely 10 days into its first run. The overseas market is also quite a different thing from what it was a decade ago.

While Avatar did more than $2 billion in overseas box offices, that film’s China premiere trailed North America by about a month. China also contributed $200 million to Avatar’s bottom line — good, but less than half of the $511 million the world’s second largest market has pulled for Endgame with a day-and-date premiere matching the U.S. Importantly, Endgame has arrived at its foreign total in just 11 days, where Avatar needed 47.

Avengers: Endgame has pulled $619 million domestically, according to Box Office Mojo, which is so far ninth all time for that category, and about $40 million behind Titanic (in fifth place, already beaten in this category last year by Avengers: Infinity War). However, Titanic padded its overall figure with a couple of re-releases in 2012 and 2017 that added about $60 million to the film’s bottom line.

Box Office Mojo said that Avengers: Endgame’s second-weekend estimate of $149.2 million from domestic box offices is just shy of the record Star Wars: The Force Awakens set in 2015. If the film’s falloff is similar to Avengers: Infinity War last year, it will surpass Avatar’s domestic box office total by Memorial Day weekend, good for second all-time. The Force Awakens’ U.S. record of $936.7 million is less likely to be threatened by Endgame.

If anything, this shows the importance of China to a moneymaking genre increasingly developed for that market. Avatar did 72.7 percent of its business overseas. Before Endgame, no superhero movie in the top 100 worldwide had taken 70 percent or more of its total box office from foreign markets. Endgame is the first, at 71.7 percent so far.

Avengers: Endgame is still playing in all 4,662 theaters nationwide (duh) so if you haven’t jumped on that bandwagon, we have a guaranteed no-spoiler review. If you have, here’s our full spoiler analysis. And if you are woefully behind in your Marvel Cinematic Universe library (there are 22 films in the past 11 years, after all) here is our just-published ranking of all of them.