Where the Data Ranks 2018’s Comic Book Films. Venom Nears $850 Million

Comic film adaptations are big dollars and we track how they do each week to see trends and what’s working and what’s not.

2018 is shaping up to be a record setting year for comic film adaptations. It looks like it’ll top 2017’s record year and then some. Currently, comic adaptations have earned $2.164 billion domestically, $3.508 billion internationally, $5.672 billion worldwide, with a “profit” of $4.750 billion. That’s off of 5 films. 2017, with 16 films, saw domestic earnings of $2.365 billion, international earnings of $3.755 billion, worldwide earnings of $6.120 billion, and “profits” of $4.442 billion. 2018 still has Aquaman and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse yet to open as well as the PG-13 recut of Deadpool 2, Once Upon a Deadpool. Those three should easily add another billion to this year’s total.

This past weekend Venom came in at #17 at the weekend box office with an estimated $380,000 to bring its domestic total to $212.3 million. Internationally, the film added $21 million over the past week to bring that total to $631.7 million. There’s a chance the film will become the highest grossing “Spider-Man” film before its run is done and make it into the top ten superhero films of all time. The film also shows that budget isn’t everything. It has the best return in multiplier when it comes to budget for a comic film of 2018, so far. With 8.44x it beats Avengers: Infinity War‘s 6.82x and 6.73x for Black Panther.

With a budget of just $100 million, the film is quite profitable and another success for Sony’s Spider-Man franchise which previously earned on average $318.8 million domestically, $488.4 million internationally, and $807.2 million worldwide. The film is likely to be the second worst performing Spider-Man related film domestically for Sony but first currently internationally. The difference is the budget is almost half the other films allowing for a healthy profit. The film is leaning heavily on the international market where it has earned 74.85% of its earnings compared to 62.65% for other Spider-Man films.

Ant-Man and the Wasp didn’t chart for the weekend but still earned about $1,600 internationally over the past week. It now stands at $216.6 million domestically, $406 million internationally, and $622.6 million worldwide.

The film has not only passed the original domestically (both adjusted and not-adjusted for inflation) but it also has passed it internationally. The film should keeping adding dollars to its total for the next month and is above $100 million over the original. The sequel has a budget of about $32 million more than the original so it’ll need to that to even out profitability.

Avengers: Infinity War gained some dollars. Avengers: Infinity War added about $10,000 to its international earnings.

Here’s where this year’s comic films stand as far as the actual numbers.

Total Domestic Gross: $2.164 billion
Total International Gross: $3.508 billion
Worldwide Gross: $5.672 billion
Total Reported Budgets: $897.1 million
Total “Profit”: $4.750 billion

Average Domestic Gross: $270.5 million
Average International Gross: $438.5 million
Average: Worldwide Gross: $709 million
Average Budget: $128.2 million
Average Profit: $580.8 million

Below is where the films released stand when it comes to being compared to this year’s averages. Those in green are above average while those below are red.