The Avengers Officially Wraps Its Theatrical Run

Marvel's The Avengers, the top-grossing film of the year and third highest-grossing movie of all time, has officially completed its theatrical run, with a final domestic tally of $623.4 million, reports Comic Book Movie. A Twitter account associated with Box Office Guru announced the news, and that site confirmed that the final global haul is over $1.5 billion for the team-up film. The film had already left theaters once, but came back almost immediately last month with a Labor Day reissue. The Avengers shattered box office expectations and set dozens of records in its first weekend of release, making more than $200 million and eventually becoming one of the fastest films ever to hit a number of significant box office milestones. It's the highest-grossing Walt Disney Studios film ever made, with both of the movies ahead of it (director James Cameron's Titanic and Avatar) having been distributed by 20th Century Fox. The kick-off event of the summer movie season, it was expected that The Avengers would do well, but many fans questioned whether the film had the potential to out-gross the smash hit The Hunger Games, which had come out shortly before it and opened at a remarkable $175 million in its first frame. As soon as it had done so, pundits started looking ahead to Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, which at one point was expected to break the records set by The Avengers. After having passed The Dark Knight, Marvel's The Avengers became the top-grossing comic book adaptation (and superhero film) of all time. Up next for Marvel, of course, is their "Phase Two" slate of films, including sequels to Iron Man, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger and new adaptations like Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man. Unless another property, like the rumored Black Panther film, is inserted into the development pipeline, it looks as though that phase will end in 2015 with the as-yet-untitled Avengers sequel that Marvel will release that summer.