This Is the Highest-Grossing Movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jun 29, 9:03AM EDT · Published Jun 29, 7:55AM EDT

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This Is the Highest-Grossing Movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — © Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Marvel, the comic book company, was founded in 1939. Since then, it has created some of the best-known comic heroes in history. These characters have a worldwide audience, both because of the original comic books and movies made about them later. Captain America was one of the early successes of Marvel. The character was introduced in 1941, just as the United States entered World War II. He became the perfect symbol of the country as it fought fascism in Europe and the Pacific.

One of the first places some Marvel characters appeared outside comic books was on TV. There were series about the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man in the 1960s, but they were animated. Batman, Superman and the others did not take off on the screen until they became the subjects of movies.

24/7 Tempo has compiled a list of the Marvel movies that did best at the box office, and the numbers are staggering. From this list, we picked the most successful. Some of these movies made more money than the gross domestic products of some countries, with nine of the movies bringing in more than a billion dollars.

The list of finalists is dominated by Avengers movies, which feature such popular characters as Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man and Thor, holding the top four places on this list. This series began with “The Avengers” in 2012 and has gone from strength to strength. “Avengers: Infinity War,” released in 2018, grossed $2.0 billion. “Avengers: Endgame,” released in 2019, topped that with $2.8 billion, becoming the second highest-grossing movie of all time after “Avatar.”
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To determine which Marvel movie did best at the box office, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data for films produced by Marvel Studios from The Numbers, an online movie database owned by consulting firm Nash Information Services. Movies were ranked based on the total worldwide box office as of June 2021. In addition to box office data, information on production budget, distributor and cast also came from The Numbers.

Among these films, the highest grossing is “Avengers: Endgame.” Here are the details:

Worldwide box office: $2.8 billion (second most out of all movies)
Domestic box office: $858.4 million (second most out of all movies)
Production budget: $400 million (the most out of all movies)
Distributor: Walt Disney
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth

This is the 22nd film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it serves as a conclusion to the story up to that point, ending the arcs for several characters. The surviving members of the Avengers and their allies attempt to reverse the destruction caused by Thanos, the villain in “Infinity War,” the prior film.

Click here to read about all the highest-grossing movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.