'Avengers: Infinity War' Will Take MCU Over $15 Billion

The total rake for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, at this printing, stands at $14.81 BILLION, and [...]

The total rake for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, at this printing, stands at $14.81 BILLION, and it is highly likely that Avengers: Infinity War will take the franchise over the $15 billion mark based on its $225 million projection for opening weekend. Curiously, though, is where those dollars have been spent.

Our friends at Fun.com took the time to break down the individual movies -- or sequentially named spinoffs -- to identify which branch of the money tree has produced the most fruit. Even with the search interest in Iron Man 2 (according to CableTV.com) or Thor (thanks to ValueGamers.com) the bulk of the money has been a little more evenly spread.

Movies in the "Avengers" vein contributed $2.92 billion, or 19.74%, to the total pool. Iron Man pulled in $2.42 billion, narrowly edging both Captain America's $2.23 billion, and Thor's $1.94 billion.

Each of Iron Man, Captain America and Thor have multiple movies to their backing -- as does Guardians of the Galaxy, which tallied $1.63 billion -- as other films in the MCU only have one movie.

According to Fun.com, the single, standalone products lag behind the others.

Avengers Infinity War Money
(Photo: Fun.com)

Black Panther is the closest to knocking off the franchise faces as it raked in $1.3 billion with its first big screen opportunity.

From there, Spider-Man: Homecoming took home $880 million, Doctor Strange pulled in $678 million, Ant-Man added $519 million, while The Incredible Hulk added $253 million.

From the Fun.com article, we may not have known at the time, but the world of entertainment changed significantly on May 2, 2008 when Iron Man hit theaters. The movie, which featured one of Marvel's mid-tier characters which they still owned the rights to, opened to rave reviews and made nearly $100 million on opening weekend en route to becoming the second biggest movie of the year behind The Dark Knight.

The most important thing, however, came in a scene shown in a post-credit scene in which Nick Fury approaches Tony Stark to talk about The Avengers. From that moment, the Marvel Cinematic Universe began to form.

It wasn't so much of a bang, but a spark that led to a series of films released in Phase One of Marvel's plan that included The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America with audiences anticipating the big payoff. In 2012, fans got their wish when The Avengers assembled on the big screen for the first time and broke all the box office records for superhero movies as well as some overall records too! Fast forward six years and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is showing no signs of slowing down. They've already released Black Panther this year, which broke a ton of box office records while becoming a cultural phenomenon.

Avengers: Infinity War will be the MCU's 19th film and will put the franchise's box office earnings over $15 billion when it's all said and done. Check out the infographic at this link charting how each film leading up to this milestone release has performed at both the domestic and international box offices.

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