On Sunday, a Disney owned movie – Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame grossed $2.7902 billion at the box office, pushing it over the $2.7897 billion earned by James Cameron’s sci-fi epic (another Disney owned movie).
Marvel chief Kevin Feige hailed the achievement at Comic-Con in San Diego this weekend, although it was still officially $500,000 short at the time.
In the UK, however, the film can only claim fifth place on the all-time box office chart.
Star Wars; The Force Awakens is still the country’s top-earning movie, after taking £123.2m at the box office in 2015.
It is followed by two Bond movies, Skyfall and Spectre, and Avatar, which is £3m ahead of Endgame’s current tally of £91m.
The Force Awakens is also the box office champion in North America, meaning Endgame’s record-breaking haul was down to a strong international showing.
The film, which starred Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow and Chris Hemsworth as Thor, collected $629m in China, $105m in South Korea and $85m in Brazil.
Disney boss Alan Horn said fans had taken the film to “historic heights”.
Avengers: Endgame has not just been a success at the box office – it has also drawn widespread critical acclaim.
Reviews when it was released spawned descriptions such as “glorious”, “irresistible”, “intensely satisfying” and “masterful”.
Its score on reviews aggregator on Rotten Tomato is over 90%.
Disney bought Marvel Studios in 2009 and recently completed its acquisition of Fox, which owned the rights to Avatar.
That means the “House of Mouse” is now home to seven of the top 10 highest-grossing films of all time – including all four Avengers films.
Culled from BBC News
