Even though the industry has been crippled by the effects of the pandemic for well over a year and a half, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has continued to reinforce its dominance as the biggest brand in the business.
Sure, Venom: Let There Be Carnage may hold the domestic opening weekend record for the age of COVID-19, but Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Eternals are directly behind it on the 2021 rankings, while the most recent entry in the series nabbed $162 million globally after debuting last Friday.
The success of Eternals, which additionally hauled in $71 million domestically in its first frame, has seen the MCU cross a cumulative total of $9 billion at the domestic box office, as per Forbes. To put that into perspective, the only other franchises to have crossed that number on a worldwide scale are Star Wars and the Wizarding World, while Kevin Feige’s baby now sits on a whopping and mind-melting global cume of $23.5 billion.
That’s a whole lot of moolah, once again making it abundantly clear that no other property in the past, present or perhaps even future of cinema is going to come anywhere close to making even half as much money as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.