THOR: THE DARK WORLD Wins Box Office, But Still Not IRON MAN Numbers

By Nick Dourian on Monday, November 18th, 2013

Congratulations are in order for the Odinson, as his flick THOR: THE DARK WORLD continues to dominate the box office, taking the top sede in its second week of release. Topping out with a respectable $38.5 million, the sequel now sits at a worldwide haul of $479.8 million, far higher than any other non Iron Man movie. Although, that also reveals a bit of a problem for Marvel Studios, who so desperately need a billion dollar franchise which isn’t dependent on Robert Downey Jr.’s charismatic rendition of the ol’ shellhead.

While THOR: THE DARK WORLD is certainly capable of breaking the $600 million barrier (again, a threshold only reached by RDJ centric Marvel Studios flicks), it’s nowhere near Iron Man 3 ‘s 1.3 billion dollar haul. That’s a massive dropoff for Marvel’s second most successful solo franchise, and despite all of Kevin Feige’s intense efforts, I’m not sure if kind folks at the House of Ideas can improve Thor’s clout. And hell, they gave it their best try by marketing this sequel as “Thor: Loki’s Totally In This One” so that fans of that green garbed god of mischief would undoubtedly know he’s in the film.

What do you think? What franchise could rise to the challenge?

SOURCE: HitFix

S#!T Talking Central

Christopher M

looking at the numbers, since it’s only been two weeks in..they are impressive.. I could see THE DARK WORLD slowing down around $800-900 million worldwide.. it still hasn’t opened in China and the international market is one to boost these numbers to crazy heights.. if it reaches $800 it would still be a bigger hit than most franchise sequels, not to mention other Marvel films.. there’s a lot of comparison to Avengers and Iron Man 3.. people should be comparing it to the original Thor (budget was only $20m less than TDW) or even IRON MAN 2 instead.. being upset a film reached $700m instead of a billion isn’t sane.. these films are massively profitable no matter what (Marvel is already in the black with this film).. Marvel proves again and again, their films dwarf the profits from the X-Men franchise.. the studio is already talking about THOR 3 while IRON MAN 4 won’t be happening anytime soon..
Davis Ray Sickmon Jr

Meh. I think this is a non-issue. They don’t have to reach the goals of their other successes to be wildly successful. Right now, even without looking at Iron Man 3’s 1.3 Billion, Thor 2 is a major success. At the rate they are going, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is on track to be the most successful movie series in history when take as a whole, and until Disney starts shipping Star Wars movies. Right now, they are at $5.5 billion, and after Thor 2 has had it’s run, will probably land in the $6 Billion range. That doesn’t include anything that’s happening with Agents of SHIELD, of course, which probably doesn’t contribute that much. They’ve got two moves in post production, three movies in pre-production, a contract for four TV series and a Defenders mini-series with NetFlix, and that’s not even getting into the Phase 3 stuff. The next largest movie franchise is Harry Potter at $9 Billion, Star Wars at $9.1 Billion, and James Bond at $14.6 Billion. If they don’t run into franchise fatigue (which they are trying to combat with the “one existing character movie, one new character movie per year” plan) they’ll end up passing Harry Potter & Star Wars by the end of 2016. Holler when profitability of the movies starts to really drop off – then they have a problem.