“The Avengers” Continues to Dominate Box Office

“The Avengers” Continues to Dominate Box Office

By the end of the week, "The Avengers," which cost an estimated $220 million to produce, may have closed to $600 million ticket sales worldwide.

With a massive sales amounting to a quarter of a billion dollars in its first week of release, the Marvel superhero mash-up “The Avengers” is most likely to join Hollywood's most elite club called the brotherhood of billion-dollar box office movies.

The movie opened first overseas, with elaborate red-carpet premieres in Rome, London, Beijing, and Moscow, where audiences have readily embraced the special-effects-driven action and adventure film.

American movies often earn lately far more money abroad than at home – up to 70% of their overall take, and rising.

The hero-packed action film, whose A-list stars include Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey, Jr., revolves around an international peace-keeping crew of Iron Man, Thor, the Incredible Hulk, Hawkeye and Black Widow and Captain America. It got a 93% high rating from online reviews.

The movie is expected to open in the U.S. and Canada to at least $150 million in ticket sales, among the top five biggest openings of all time.

“The Avengers” is expected to join the group of globally dominant films namely “Avatar,” “Harry Potter,” “Titanic,” “Star Wars,” "Lord of the Rings," "Pirates of the Caribbean," “Toy Story,” and “Transformers.”

So far, the hero-packed action picture has performed best in Britain and Mexico, but is expected to be huge in Russia and China, where movies with big special effects have traditionally been popular and where language is not a barrier.

Posted by Kade Quinn on Saturday May 05 2012, 4:14 AM EST. Ref: CNN. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Entertainment, Featured News. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0