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Much has been made in the media about the impending re-release of Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame. People say it’s a blatant money grab, and a transparent attempt to unseat 2009’s Avatar as the movie with the top worldwide box office gross. Those people are absolutely right on both counts, but the people decrying Endgame ‘s re-release as unfair are absolutely wrong.
Why? Because Avatar had a re-release, too! In the summer of 2010, Avatar: Special Edition was released, adding back some deleted scenes and extending a few existing ones (mostly with CGI, not surprisingly). It took in about $33.2 million worldwide, a total that is included in the worldwide gross of the original movie.
Time for the math: ‘s total worldwide gross was $2,787,965,087. Removing its re-release’s take from that total leaves $2,754,754,243. Subtracting Endgame’s gross thus far from that leaves $5,150,277: only five million dollars, which sounds like a lot, but it’s not even worth pocket change compared to the totals. That’s less than one-fifth of 1% (0.00187, to be exact) of Endgame ‘s gross.
So, not only is Endgame way closer to Avatar than it looks if you just look at the totals, but it’s also obviously completely fair that it’s getting its own re-release. Can we stop all the whining now? Please?
(Of course, this isn’t adjusted for inflation…)
Originally published at https://geekdad.com on June 24, 2019.
