After 22 films spread over 11 years and 3000 minutes of runtime (plus bathroom breaks!) the first phase of the Marvel Comic Universe (MCU) has come to an end. The franchise, which recently grossed over $20 billion, recently became the most profitable of all time. Beginning with Iron man in 2008, we have seen quite some evolution, with a budget of around $140m and a box office revenue of $580m. The last film, ‘Avengers: Endgame’ had three times the budget and was the fastest ever film to surpass $1bn, doing so in roughly four days. The release of presale alone, many of the largest vendors, such as Fandango, Atom Tickets, and AMC Theaters all faced delays and crashes to their websites.
Interestingly, when accounting for inflation however, Avengers: Endgame doesn’t look on track for the top spot. Gone with the Wind, the 1939 epic historical romance film, had a worldwide gross of $3,703,000,000 as per 2017 levels. For those of
you who thought Avengers was long (181 minutes) Gone with the Wind came in at a whopping four hours (once accounting for overture, intermission, entr'acte, and exit music’). It was also many times more profitable, costing $3.9m which is ~$70m by today’s standards. Avengers Endgame does still have a small chance to take the spot as it has only been a week however, and in the words of Scarlett O’Hara, ‘tomorrow is another day!’.