Marvel prepares for big-budget overseas box office face-off

Avengers: Age of Ultron has already begun its all-out assault on the box office. It broke $200 million with lightning speed. This has been accomplished — despite the film only being released in the United States on Friday — by releasing the film early in 44 territories around the world. To put it plainly, the film’s success in the United States is only a fraction of the overall equation for big money films.

To find another, perhaps more striking, example of this phenomenon, one has to look no further than this weekend’s box office returns. Furious 7, the adrenaline-soaked car extravaganza has become the fifth highest-grossing movie of all time with a total worldwide gross of $1.32 billion, only $20 million away from surpassing the final Harry Potter movie. Furious 7 has exceeded all expectations, but domestically it has only done really well, sitting at 36th place with $320 million. The domestic gross has only accounted for 24 percent of the overall success of the film.

This is why one can see film series such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers continue on despite relatively disappointing recent domestic performances. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides earned a 33 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and grossed only — “only” is being used in a very relative sense here — $241 million domestically (That is less than My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Maleficent). Worldwide? On Stranger Tides is the fifteenth highest-grossing film of all time at $1.04 billion. Transformers: Age of Extinction’s is a similar story. Last year’s robot-centric “Age of” movie earned 18 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, a 91st domestic ranking with $245 million domestic, but came in at 11th all-time worldwide at $1.09 billion. At 23 percent and 24 percent respectively, those films depended on the U.S. for a fraction of their success.

The big change here is China. The Chinese box office has exploded in recent years. Age of Extinction was, until this last week when Furious 7 passed it, the highest grossing movie ever in China at $320 million. That is $75 million more than it made in the U.S. representing and representing a huge chunk of its worldwide profits. Now, it must be said that, due to China’s strict rules governing its film business, only a fraction of those dollars make it back to the studios who produced the films (Some estimates are as low as 27 cents on the dollar). This, however, is not a deterrent for the studios. Studios are making a strong push into China and Age of Ultron, which will open there on May 12, will be the next movie to push into that market. But, what seems like a forgone conclusion in the states may not be as clear-cut in the foreign market. Ultron might very well fall short of Furious 7 in some areas of the world. In China for example, the only non-Chinese movies to break into the all-time top 10 are James Cameron’s two world beaters Avatar and Titanic, the newly crowned Furious 7 and two Transformers movies. This signals a different sort of market overseas, one that is not governed by our basic assumptions about the stranglehold of superhero movies. For example, Iron Man 3, which made serious waves two years ago for its specific targeting of the Chinese market with added extra scenes and input from Chinese studios, only reached 15th all-time.

O.K., James Cameron’s two box office juggernauts — still the only two films to break $2 billion worldwide — are freaks of nature, Cameron made a deal with some box office demon from whom he gained the power to basically print money with his films. Those anomalies aside, the worldwide market is extremely difficult to predict. At first glance, it seems as if the oft-repeated criticism that big blockbuster films appeal to the least common denominator is only magnified overseas. This line of thinking is straightforward. When films are being translated into other languages and shown to people of different cultures then the most basic story lines will appeal as they will apply to the most people’s perspectives. Essentially, cars flying from one building to another or robot aliens punching robot dinosaurs is a universal language.

This would suggest that the biggest and stupidest films would do the most damage worldwide. And, to a certain extent, this holds true. Furious 7 just became the non James Cameron-directed movie to break a billion overseas and, as previously mentioned, Furious 7 and Age of Extinction are one and two in China’s all-time box office. This theory becomes murkier when one scrolls down the all-time overseas box-office list, however, and sees oddities such as two Ice Age sequels and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in the top 20. Clearly things are not so simple overseas. For one reason or another, an animated ground sloth can grab the attention of children worldwide and tilt the box office scales in one direction or another.

So, make no mistake; Age of Ultron will ravage the box office like a bunch of 13th century Mongol horsemen. The first Avengers raked in the third-highest ever box office, and the overseas market has only grown in the last three years. Furious 7 stands no chance against Ultron in the U.S. market, Ultron will likely at least match, if not surpass, its predecessor’s robust $623 million domestic performance. But, overseas, Furious 7 might actually put up quite the fight. It is a testament to whatever strange Cameron-like lightning that Furious 7 has caught in its bottle that this is even the case, but this is a realistic possibility in the landscape in which we live in. Ultron is already a fifth of the way to Furious’s billion with China and Japan still to begin. But a billion dollars is still a billion dollars. There is a reason why only three films have ever reached that benchmark.

Whatever happens, the overseas competition between these two films will be the sort of big stupid underdog behemoth versus even more colossal behemoth battle that would likely bludgeon its way to an impressive overseas box office of its own right.

Daniel Grzywacz is a senior majoring in anthropology and neuroscience. He is also the lifestyle editor at the Daily Trojan. His column, “The Showbiz Must Go On,” ran Mondays.