What The Lowest Avengers Movie Box Office Reveals About The MCU

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has seen incredible box office success with its Avengers movies, with even the series' lowest grossing release - Avengers: Age of Ultron - making a considerable amount of money and revealing quite a lot about the MCU as a whole at the same time. Avengers: Age of Ultron came out three years after The Avengers shattered all expectations at the box office. Despite astronomical levels of hype, the sequel failed to live up to its predecessor in a few different ways.

With that said, Age of Ultron still made over a billion dollars at the box office, and served as further proof that the franchise would continue to succeed on a long-term basis. As such, Avengers: Age of Ultron was a success, setting up multiple plot threads the MCU timeline would explore going forward, revealing a lot about the MCU's box office potential as a whole, and even putting upcoming MCU movies in a different context via what it says about the franchise.

The Avengers' "Worst" Box Office Is Still Mind-Blowing

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Avengers: Age of Ultron was released to weaker critical scores, and its opening weekend failed to reach the same heights as The Avengers, making about $191 million compared to $207 million. The Avengers was such a success story that anything that failed to live up to those lofty expectations was going to be called into question. At the time, it felt like a bit of a disappointment, and Avengers: Age of Ultron ended up making less overall than the first film, but it is still incredibly impressive just how well it did overall.

The Avengers' Movies At The Box Office Movie Year Worldwide Total The Avengers 2012 $1,515,100,211 Avengers: Age of Ultron 2015 $1,395,316,979 Avengers: Infinity War 2018 $2,048,359,754 Avengers: Endgame 2019 $2,748,242,781

There have been 34 films released in the MCU's movie roster since it first kicked off in 2008. Avengers: Age of Ultron still ranks fifth overall in the franchise's worldwide box office, which is a considerable thing to note given Marvel's overall success in this field. In fact, the only MCU movie that has made more that isn't an Avengers movie is Spider-Man: No Way Home, which exploded from decades of nostalgia. Looking beyond the MCU, Avengers: Age of Ultron is ranked 16th at the box office for any movie ever made. It was and always will be a runaway success.

The Avengers' Box Office Is Still Impressive To This Day

Iron Man blew everyone away when it was released in 2008, and just four years later The Avengers was released, changing the movie industry forever. It made $207 million domestic opening weekend, which smashed the record at the time; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 was the previous record holder at just under $170 million in the domestic opening weekend. The success of The Avengers lead to Marvel being the most dominant franchise of all time, and spawned a plethora of other cinematic universes in its wake that hoped to mirror the MCU.

Related The Avengers (2012) Cast - Where Are They Now? 2012's The Avengers is one of the most important films in MCU history, and its star-studded cast has gone on to do great things in and out of the MCU.

It's hard to overstate just how important The Avengers was for Marvel Studios. In fact, The Avengers is still in the top five highest grossing MCU films of all time, in front of Avengers: Age of Ultron and behind Spider-Man: No Way Home. It also sits at 11th in the overall box office for any film ever made. In an age where it was unclear whether Marvel could pull off a cross-franchise team up, The Avengers proved (in still impressive fashion) just how big these movies could be, and that is only made clearer when it's compared to its sequel.

A Higher MCU Budget Doesn't Always Mean A Better Box Office

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Sometimes it feels like studios think there is a correlation between a film's production budget and the amount of money it will make at the box office. Of course, some of the biggest films of all time have been the most expensive to ever be made, but that doesn't necessarily mean a bigger budget automatically means more money. This is something the MCU has shown over the years, especially in more recent releases.

The Marvels, MCU's lowest grossing movie, has the fourth-highest production budget.

The Avenger's budget back in 2012 was $225 million, while Avengers: Age of Ultron was made for $365 million, a significant jump compared to the first. In fact, Avengers: Age of Ultron is the second most expensive MCU film, just behind Avengers: Endgame. When a franchise gets huge, it feels like studios want to make the next installments even bigger, which results in these massive budgets. Add in the fact that actors are negotiating for higher pay following the success, and it results in movies being more expensive while not necessarily bringing in more money in the long run.

Age Of Ultron's MCU Status Reveals A Franchise Trick

When looking at Avengers: Age of Ultron and its relation to the rest of the MCU, another thing seems to stand out. Even the "worst performing" Avengers movie typically makes more than any solo superhero movie that the MCU has put out. Spider-Man: No Way Home may be the third highest grossing movie for Marvel, but that is the outlier in the top five, with the remaining spots taken up by the four Avengers movies.

Team-up (or crossover) films are what really dominate the box office.

Overall, team-up (or crossover) films are what really dominate the box office, with some anomalies like Iron Man 3 or Black Panther. It's worth noting that Captain America: Civil War - which could be seen as partially Avengers 2.5 - made considerably more arguably because of its more team-focused story, with its $1.15 billion worldwide box office coming in at almost four hundred thousand dollars more than Captain America: Winter Soldier, which has the series' next highest box office numbers. Team-ups are a natural hit, and something like Deadpool & Wolverine performing incredibly well in 2024 shows that remains true.

Avengers: Age of Ultron has aged a bit more gracefully over the course of the MCU since it first appeared. It had a lot of heavy lifting to do in terms of setting up the rest of Marvel's Infinity Saga narrative, including Thor: Ragnarok, Captain America: Civil War, and Iron Man's paranoia, which is the driving back-half of his story that culminates in Avengers: Endgame. It's easy to overlook Avengers: Age of Ultron, but it still remains one of the MCU's most successful movies years later, and serves to help underline a lot of noteworthy things for the franchise.

Upcoming MCU Movies

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Source: The Numbers