‘Avengers: Endgame’: Millennials Binge On Marvel Mythology As Finale Film Looms
“It’s Marvel’s Universe and we just binge in it.” That could be the new motto for Millennials judging by the findings of a new Fandango survey that shows the generation is making deep dives into the Marvel library before next week’s release of Avengers: Endgame, which has been billed as the climatic finale of the Marvel screen saga to date.
Avengers: Endgame from Disney’s Marvel Studios opens April 26 and appears poised for mega-success after breaking the pre-sales record set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In the Fandango survey, 89% of Endgame moviegoers said they would prepare for the major popcorn event by streaming previous Marvel Cinematic Universe movies with friends and family at home this week. According to the same poll, a robust 49% of the Millennials surveyed said they are planning a full-on Marvel movie binge this weekend.
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That data dovetails with FandangoNow findings that show a major increase in Marvel movie transactions. FandangoNOW, the video streaming service from Fandango, has logged a 50% increase in transactions for Marvel Cinematic Universe movies during the past two weeks, a time window keyed to the April 2 on-sale for Avengers: Endgame advance tickets.
According to the Fandango survey, the top five MCU titles fans plan to watch, ranked by their responses: Avengers: Infinity War (2018), The Avengers (2012), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Thor: Ragnarok (2017). (FandangoNOW, Fandango’s streaming service, will launch a holiday weekend sale on MCU titles to help Millennials with their superhero marathons.)
To date, Avengers: Endgame is Fandango’s top preseller at the same point in the sales cycle. Several thousand showtimes are already sold out, while theaters continue to post new showtimes on Fandango to meet the fan demand.
“The countdown has started and we’re super-excited with only one week to go until Avengers: Endgame opens in theaters,” says Fandango Managing Editor Erik Davis. “Fans are getting ready for the film’s debut by re-watching previous MCU titles or introducing ‘newbies,’ friends and family members to the titles they need to see to get up-to-date.”
Avengers: Infinity War finished last year as 2018’s top-grossing release with a world-wide box office total of $2.08 billion, a staggering total that ranks as an all-time record for superhero genre. The record books will likely be rewritten again by this year’s edition of the franchise, which is based on the Marvel Comics super-team introduced by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in 1963 and features heroes such as Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo).
The new films caps a huge first decade for Marvel Studios, which continues to build momentum. Avengers Endgame is off to an unprecedented level of presale success in China, for instance, and has delivered a new high-mark in the marketing promotional campaigns arena with global ad partnerships representing a combined media value well north of $200 million. With the crush of interest, co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo have asked fans to preserve plots secrets and refrain from spreading spoilers via social media.
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