Marvel’s The Avengers took just 54 days to cross the $600 million domestic box office threshold, as today it became one of only three films in history ever to reach the milestone. The Super Hero film’s global total is now an estimated $1,438.3 million, and it stands as the number 3 film of all time globally and domestically.
Major kudos to Joss Whedon and the team at Marvel who assembled the right cast and crew to make this film. Only one other director has duplicated this effort. James Cameron, whom Disney is working with on adding Avatar to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, created the two other films “Titanic” and “Avatar.”
The success of The Avengers means that a Marvel based themepark is now set to start construction… in Dubai. Disney is prohibited from building anything related to The Avengers on the east coast as long as Universal Studios holds the theme park rights to the characters. Which makes me wonder, with almost $1.5 billion generated so far, how much of that would they have to throw Universal’s way to get back those rights.
With the success of Wizarding World of Harry Potter under its belt, Universal Orlando is currently in a major expansion mode and have just demolished even more buildings to make way for some, as yet, unannounced project. The speculation is Transformers, which would make the Spider-Man attraction at IOA a bit redundant as it shares similar ride systems. So if Disney were to somehow make it more attractive for IOA to just give up on Marvel Island, Universal might jump at having the extra cash to invest in the parks. If Disney truly believes that any increase in tourism to Central Florida is good for Disney, then it won’t mind helping Universal out, just this once.
Btw, if you pre-order the 4 disc box set of The Avengers today you can save 30% and help Disney take back Marvel theme park rights and The Disney Blog at the same time. Nifty.