Does Avengers: Endgame owe its box office success in China to Avatar?
- Endgame has already overtaken James Cameron’s Titanic as the second-highest grossing movie of all-time worldwide, and is closing in on another of his films
The incredible global box office success of Disney’s Avengers: Endgame has got to the point where it is taking down the biggest grossers of all time.
On Sunday, the movie became the second-highest grossing movie of all-time worldwide with over US$2.1 billion, passing Titanic. Next up for the Marvel movie is taking the throne from Avatar, which tops with US$2.7 billion (not counting inflation).
Sandwiched between two James Cameron movies has got the MCU fans feeling a little bold as they went online over the weekend and began to troll the Oscar-winning director about the record-breaking success of Endgame and its all-but inevitable toppling of Avatar, which has reigned the worldwide box office since 2009.
Cameron is too busy making multiple Avatar movies (or counting his money) to really care, but it does bring up a good time to give a little history lesson to these fans: if it weren’t for Avatar, the success of Endgame would not be possible. Specifically what Cameron’s movie did in China.
Back in 2009 and the beginning of 2010, when the Middle Kingdom was still on its way to becoming a huge international movie market, Avatar came out and revolutionised moviegoing in the region.
Avatar took over US$204 million in China in 2010, helping the box office there to spike 64 per cent from the previous year, and showing Hollywood that the region was a cash cow. At the same time Avatar was amazing audiences, movie theatres and IMAX screens were being built at an incredible rate in China – with over 300 theatres and IMAX screens added in 2010 alone. That propelled China into the second-largest movie market in the world, just behind the United States.
So without Avatar paving the way, you could argue that some Hollywood blockbusters wouldn’t have cashed in as much as they have. From Tom Cruise and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson movies, to MCU, all these pillars of the studio system have benefited from the box office in China.