The hype surrounding the latest instalment of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has gone through the roof in India: Avengers Endgame sold out its pre-sales tickets within hours of opening, while the movie is expected to emerge as the highest Hollywood grosser in the country.
Avengers Endgame, which is the culmination of a massive storyline built across 22 MCU movies over 11 years, releases worldwide on April 26.
Ticketing website BookMyShow, which opened its advance bookings on April 21, said it sold over a million tickets for the movie on day 1 – about 18 tickets every second.
Anticipation for the Avengers franchise was such that the BookMyShow website, along with Paytm which also sells movie tickets, crashed as soon as pre-sales began.
“The prequel Avengers: Infinity War broke all records and saw the biggest worldwide opening of all times,” said Ashish Saksena, COO - Cinemas, BookMyShow. “We expect the concluding part to break more records.”
Both BookMyShow and Paytm are running offers to cash in on the Avengers craze.
A shortage on the ticketing platforms was also triggered in part by the fact that PVR opened its own advance booking on the evening of April 20, leading many of its own tickets being sold before pre-sales could open on BookMyShow or Paytm.
Overall, analysts expect the movie to emerge as the biggest Hollywood grosser in India, beating its prequel Infinity Wars, which beat The Jungle Book.
Not just in India, Marvel’s pop culture phenomenon has engulfed several markets, including its home country, US.
In six hours, Avengers Endgame broke pre-sale ticket records on movie ticketing website Fandango and outpaced other high scorers like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and Rogue One and Avengers: Infinity War.
A similar scenario was witnessed by AMC Entertainment Holdings, the biggest US cinema chain which could not handle the traffic when tickets first went on sale.
In fact, some who had managed to grab tickets early offered them on Ebay for as high as $500.
Endgame is likely to top the opening gross of its sequel Infinity Wars -- $265 million to $257.7 milllion.
In this US, the movie is expected to gross about $645 million, which would make it the third-biggest movie of all time behind Avatar and Titanic. Currently, Star Wars: The Force Awakens stands third in the list.
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