Avengers: Doomsday pulled in $16.5 million in advance ticket sales on its first day of availability, a fast start that arrived when Disney’s Marvel Studios put tickets on sale alongside the first official trailer. The film opens the weekend of Dec. 18, and the early numbers suggest Marvel has another event picture on its hands before a single full day of play has begun.
The draw is not hard to see. The trailer teased an epic battle between the Avengers and X-Men with Robert Downey Jr. back on screen, this time as Doctor Doom rather than Iron Man. For moviegoers who have been waiting to see what Marvel does with that pivot, the sales launch answered the question in the most direct way possible: people showed up immediately.
What makes the figure more striking is where it came from. Tickets were sold only for premium formats in 1,000 domestic theaters, not across the full rollout, and the movie will still play on more than 4,000 North American screens when it opens. Showtimes for premium formats on Thursday, Dec. 17 and Friday, Dec. 18 are already largely sold out, while exhibitors are reportedly adding more screenings for Christmas Day and beyond. For a studio trying to turn a trailer drop into a box-office sprint, that is the kind of response it wanted.
There is, however, a limit built into the headline. The first-day total does not include Imax, even though Imax remains one of the biggest draws in premium exhibition. Marvel responded by introducing Infinity Vision for premium large formats, but the name is less a new gadget than a certification that theaters must meet rigorous technical standards. That matters because Avengers: Doomsday will not have access to Imax at all; Dune: Part III has the entire Imax footprint exclusively for three weeks. So the early sales strength is real, but it is also incomplete.
Even so, the comparison point is hard to ignore. Doomsday’s pre-sales are twice as high as the first-day figures for Deadpool & Wolverine, which launched to $211 million and finished at $1.3 billion. Marvel has had a rocky stretch, but the franchise’s biggest titles still set the bar: Avengers: Endgame opened to $357 million domestically and $1.2 billion globally, and remains the second-highest grossing movie of all time at $2.7 billion. Spider-Man: No Way Home reached $1.9 billion, another reminder of what happens when Marvel gives audiences a must-see opening.
Joe and Anthony Russo directed the 39th installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which features the Avengers and X-Men under the shadow of Doctor Doom. The next test comes on the weekend of Dec. 18, when the first broad box-office reading will show whether the rush to premium tickets turns into a full-scale opening. The advance sales have already made the point: this is not a cautious return for Marvel, and it is not being sold as one.
