Sorry, James Cameron. We’re living in a Marvel Cinematic Universe now.
Over the weekend Avengers: Endgame passed Avatar as the highest-grossing film of all-time, having earned $2.79 billion at the box office.
To his credit, Cameron — the director of Avatar and previous box-office champ Titanic — congratulated Marvel on Twitter with a quick note. “I see you, Marvel. Congratulations to Avengers: Endgame on becoming the new box-office king.”
Congratulations, @MarvelStudios! pic.twitter.com/DWZDX0uDVi
— Avatar (@officialavatar) July 22, 2019
(Admittedly, if you adjusted for inflation, the fourth entry in Marvel’s superhero team-up canon would only rank 16th all time, amassinng less than half of Gone With the Wind‘s adjusted take.)
Still, back in today’s movie world, the Avengers films take up four of the top ten grossing films of all-time, with the company’s standalone Black Panther coming in at number 10. As well, Disney — which bought Marvel Studios in 2009 for a piddly $4 billion and Avatar‘s studio Fox this year— now claims seven of the top ten highest-grossing films ever.
That mark might not last — The Lion King just had its own record weekend — but Disney shouldn’t be worried. They have Avatar 2 coming out in December of 2021, and Marvel Studios just announced five confirmed films over the next two years involving characters both established (Thor, Black Widow, Doctor Strange) and less mainstream (The Eternals, Shang-Chi) … and that film list doesn’t even include Captain Marvel 2, Black Panther 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, a re-re-booted Fantastic Four or anything involving “mutants” (read: X-Men reboot).
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