The summer movie season kicks off this weekend with the release of Marvel’s highly anticipated crossover event Avengers: Infinity War, and it doesn’t look like any other movie will come close to its projected box office haul. Infinity War is set to earn a potentially record-breaking amount of money in its opening weekend, and repeat viewings will likely keep the movie in the box office top 10 for a long time.
Ten years of lead up and an extensive marketing campaign have contributed to the hype for this movie, something other summer releases can’t really compete with. However, kicking off the summer movie season does come with some drawbacks. Infinity War will face little competition the week following its opening weekend, but the rest of May features two massive releases.
Deadpool 2 and Solo: A Star Wars Story will cut into Infinity War’s earnings in its later weeks, meaning that this MCU film likely won’t have the same legs as February’s mega-hit Black Panther. However, the colossal opening weekend the movie is set for will almost certainly make it the summer box office champion.
The opening weekend of a sequel to another massive movie starring Chris Pratt will be much more interesting. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom might have a hard time pulling in similar money to the preceding entry in the series, which capitalized on the 14-year gap in between dino movies. Nostalgia was a huge factor in Jurassic World’s success, and it will be difficult to replicate this feeling only three years later.
Fallen Kingdom is expected to be a hit, but it would be a surprise if the film came close to the opening weekend totals of the previous movie in the series. However, Jurassic World earned more money internationally than any Marvel movie to date, so the competition between Fallen Kingdom and Infinity War will be much more interesting in foreign markets.
The next biggest contender for the summer’s box office crown is another Disney-owned superhero property, Incredibles 2. The nostalgia factor is also at play here, with the gap between films in the series being long enough to make kids who watched the original in theatres want to relive their childhood by seeing the sequel. Not all animated films are able to do this, but Pixar has a pretty good track record of making movies that appeal to people of all ages. Just based on the trailers, Incredibles 2 doesn’t look like it’s just for little kids.
The best recent comparison here is Finding Dory, which opened thirteen years after the release of Finding Nemo. Dory killed it at the box office, making over $135 million in its opening weekend and over $1 billion worldwide over the course of its theatrical run. This kind of success is potentially within range for Incredibles 2, even though early projections have it falling short of Dory’s totals.
While Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Incredibles 2 seem to pose the biggest threats to Avengers, it’s still going to take an unforeseen set of circumstances to keep Earth’s Mightiest Heroes from winning the summer box office. While a wild card like Solo: A Star Wars Story could catch fire and ride Star Wars brand loyalty to a crazy high total, it will be very difficult for the spinoff to match Infinity War’s projected numbers.
Since early reviews of the film have been mostly positive, there is no need to worry about bad word of mouth preventing Infinity War from reaching its potential, as was the case for a superhero bomb like 2015’s Fantastic Four.
So to answer the question the headline of this article poses, no. While there are some hurdles it needs to clear, Avengers: Infinity War is still poised to become the king of the summer box office. The only real question is just how big the movie will be.