Avengers: Endgame Passes The Force Awakens As Fandango’s Biggest Pre-Seller

Thor in Avengers Endgame

Despite the fact that it's only coming out this weekend, Joe and Anthony Russo's Avengers: Endgame has been breaking box office records for weeks now. It started about a month ago when tickets first went on sale, as it set the new high bar for most pre-sale tickets sold in a single day (overloading ticket purchase websites in the process), and just a couple weeks ago Atom Tickets reported that it was officially their best pre-seller of all time.

Now Fandango is saying that the Marvel Studios blockbuster has set a new record on their site as well, as Avengers: Endgame has officially sold more pre-release tickets than the previous #1, J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

According to the company, more than 8,000 showtimes have been sold out across the United States, and theaters are being forced to add more and more showtimes in order to keep up with demand. The pace at which tickets have been selling for the film is extraordinary, as the blockbuster apparently sold five times as many tickets in its first week than the number of passes that were sold for Avengers: Infinity War this time last year.

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Fandango has posted their new Top 5 rankings following this news, and you'll notice that it's entirely dominated by the world's two biggest franchises:

1. “Avengers: Endgame” (2019)

2. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015)

3. “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (2017)

4. “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018)

5. “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” (2016)

The big question that is still lingering is exactly how well Avengers: Endgame will be able to do in its opening weekend, and if it will be able to surpass the massive numbers that were generated by the last Avengers movie. Avengers: Infinity War was a crazy success when it was released in April 2018, not only setting a new high water mark for a domestic release in its first three days ($257.7 million), but also the same record internationally ($640.5 million). It also currently stands as the movie that took the least amount of time to hit $1 billion globally, successfully making that much money in just 11 days, and it's also the highest grossing superhero release of all time, with a total of $2.048 billion.

But just how well can Avengers: Endgame really do? After all, there are only so many theaters that can show the film, and only so much time in the day to host screenings. One important factor that must be considered is the fact that it's more than three hours long, which will ultimately effect the number of times that it can be shown in a single 24 hour period. There are many prognosticators out there wondering if a $300 million domestic release is on the table, but it might not actually be possible. It's presumably a math equation that we'll get the answer to this weekend.

Regardless, what isn't in question is that Avengers: Endgame is going to be a massive success this weekend - and we'll be following its progress very closely here on CinemaBlend.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.