The thunderous success of Marvel Studios' Thor: Ragnarok has pushed the Marvel Cinematic Universe to more than $5 billion in domestic totals alone.
The Thor threequel raked in $46 million in its first day, and is expected to bring in as much as $120 million this weekend. Worldwide, Ragnarok is projected to reach $400 million by Sunday, making it another slam dunk success for Disney-owned Marvel Studios.
Marvel Studios' self-financed shared universe launched in 2008 with Iron Man, and the franchise bypassed $10 billion at the worldwide box office in May 2016 â a feat it achieved with the blockbuster success of Captain America: Civil War, which would become the latest billion dollar grosser for the studio. 2017 previously saw the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ($863 million worldwide) and Spider-Man: Homecoming ($879 million worldwide), creatively produced by Marvel Studios but owned and distributed by Sony Pictures.
Domestically, the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise has topped the Star Wars franchise ($3.3 billion, not adjusted for ticket price inflation), the Harry Potter / Wizarding World franchise ($2.6 billion), the Batman franchise (including all iterations: Batman '89 onwards, the Christopher Nolan reboot trilogy, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and The LEGO Batman Movie; $2.4 billion), the James Bond franchise ($2.1 billion) and Disney's live-action re-imaginings ($2 billion).
Thor: Ragnarok's success is fueled by strong word-of-mouth and critical praise: its "certified fresh" status on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with 93% puts it just behind Iron Man (94%) and just ahead of Spider-Man: Homecoming (92%) as the second best-received Marvel Studios movie. When reviews first dropped, Ragnarok was the highest-rated Marvel movie on Rotten Tomatoes.
Marvel Studios is expected to continue to add to their monumental success in 2018 with the release of February's Black Panther, May's Avengers: Infinity War and July's Ant-Man and the Wasp.
Tony49UK on November 6th, 2017 at 00:00 UTC »
So Stan Lee is still the highest grossing actor ever beating out Harrison Ford on $4.86 billion.
joshi38 on November 5th, 2017 at 21:14 UTC »
It's damned impressive. 17 movies in and its latest outing still dominates the Box Office, audiences are still excited for the next outing. I'm waiting for the moment when over-saturation happens; you'd have thought with 3 MCU films this year instead of the normal 2, it would be now, but people are loving Ragnarok, possibly more than GOGT2 or Homecoming.
I say bring on Black Panther.
VegasKL on November 5th, 2017 at 19:02 UTC »
I'm fully confident that the Coon and Friends franchise can catch them in due time.