Marvel Studios
- "Avengers: Endgame" has sold five times as many first-week pre-sale tickets as "Avengers: Infinity War" on Fandango.
- It now holds the record for biggest first-day and first-week pre-sales, passing "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."
- Fandango said that some theaters are even adding early morning showtimes on opening day to meet the fan demand.
A little movie called "Avengers: Endgame" arrives in theaters in two weeks, and it’s already huge at the box office.
"Endgame," the culmination of the last 11 years of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, has sold five times as many first-week pre-sale tickets as its predecessor, "Avengers: Infinity War," movie-ticket service Fandango announced on Wednesday.
Fandango said that the movie now holds the record for the biggest first week of pre-sale tickets, passing 2015’s "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." It also broke the first-day pre-sales record when tickets went on sale last week, which was previously held by "The Force Awakens," as well.
Fandango president Paul Yanover told Business Insider that the company built a "holding room" to service customers on the first day that tickets went on sale for "Endgame," which it had never done before, to avoid what happened with "The Force Awakens" when the site crashed.
"You could tell from the first 15 minutes of tickets going online it was going to be bigger than ‘The Force Awakens,’" Yanover told Business Insider the next day. "Because we can’t increase our scale to respond to a three-hour window every couple of years, we created a system to have an orderly management of the situation. People had to wait — there’s nothing we can do about that — but nothing crashed."
Thousands of showtimes are already sold out in the US, Fandango added in its release on Wednesday.
"Fandango’s exhibition partners are continually posting new showtimes (some as early as 4:00 am and 6:30 am Friday, April 26) and adding new screens on Fandango to meet the fan demand," Fandango said.
"Infinity War" holds the record for the biggest opening weekend of all time with $258 million, but "Endgame" is on track to pass that. Early estimates last month projected a $280 million box-office premiere, but experts aren’t ruling out an even greater milestone.
"Is $300 million even possible?," Exhibitor Relations senior box-office analyst Jeff Bock told Business Insider last month. "That’s what a lot of people are wondering and we may find out, as ‘Endgame’ looks headed towards a mind boggling $280 million debut."
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See Also:
- Marvel Studios boss says the next 5 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are ‘fleshed out,’ and plans will be revealed later this year
- The Marvel Cinematic Universe will enter an uncertain era after ‘Avengers: Endgame,’ but experts see a path for it to dominate another decade of pop culture
- The 7 Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that made over $1 billion at the global box office
Source: Business Insider – tclark@businessinsider.com (Travis Clark)