Democratic socialist and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has a “truly heroic” idea about what Disney can do with the massive profits it’s racking up through the record-smashing finale to the Avengers series.
“What would be truly heroic is if Disney used its profits from Avengers to pay all of its workers a middle class wage, instead of paying its CEO Bob Iger $65.6 million — over 1,400 times as much as the average worker at Disney makes,” said Sanders in an income inequality-themed tweet Monday noted by The Hill.
So just how much money is Disney’s latest Marvel film pulling in? In numbers that are blowing away even the most optimistic of predictions by the experts, “Avengers: Endgame” managed to earn a stunning $357 million in its opening weekend domestically — burying the previous record held by “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which made $248 million in December 2015.
The numbers are just as record-dominating globally: In just its opening weekend, “Endgame” has already made more than $1.2 billion globally, almost doubling the previous record held by the preceeding Avengers film, “The Infinity War,” which earned $640 million globally in its opening weekend. “Endgame” earned $866.5 million in foreign markets, racking up opening day and weekend records in almost all of the major countries, including China, South Korea, and Australia. Box Office Mojo offers some lofty predictions for where “Endgame” will end up:
Looking ahead, forecasting just where exactly Endgame will end up is near impossible, but if we were to compare to Infinity War’s domestic debut, that film went on to gross nearly $680 million at the domestic box office. Should Endgame deliver a similar multiplier we’re talking about a domestic performance topping $920 million, which would put it just shy of the current record domestic gross of $936.6 million set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens back in 2015. Whether Endgame is able to reach that mark will be a story for another day, but it seems safe to assume it will, at the very least, become the second largest domestic release of all-time considering the lowest multiplier for a film in the MCU is Captain America: Civil War‘s 2.27x, which would give Endgame a nearly $800 million domestic run.
The Bloomberg article tweeted out by Sanders tracks the Walt Disney Co.’s soaring shares and predicts more major gains for the company to come directly as a result of the success of “Endgame,” as well as Disney’s highly anticipated streaming service, which will launch this year.
“Walt Disney Co. shares hit record levels on Monday, after the company’s ‘Avengers: Endgame’ film shattered box-office records,” Bloomberg reported Monday. “The success of the film prompted analysts to expect a much larger contribution from the studio division to the company’s overall profit, and it is also seen as a positive sign as the Dow component prepares to launch its Disney+ streaming service.”
JPMorgan’s Alexia Quadrani says they’ve raised the full-year earnings estimate for Disney, “largely on better expected performance at the Studio segment,” and thus they’ve increased their price targets significantly. “The global phenomenon of ‘Avengers: Endgame’ more broadly highlights the ever-increasing popularity of Marvel content, a cornerstone of the Disney+ offering,” said Rosenblatt Securities’s Mark Zgutowicz. Cowen’s Douglas Creutz tied the film to the Disney+ streaming service, saying it’s yet another “big draw to get people to sign up.” The value of the streaming service, he said, is “at least as high as [Netflix].”
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