What happens to Hollywood if Avengers: Infinity War makes $2 billion?

Avengers: Infinity War could crack the $2 billion dollar mark. If it does, how will Hollywood and Marvel’s competitors respond?

It never seemed as though Avengers: Infinity War‘s moneymaking prowess was ever in question in the run-up to the film’s release. The Hollywood Reporter‘s latest deep-dive into the film’s box office potential even quotes Jeff Bock, an analyst, as saying that Walt Disney would probably be thanking Stan Lee were he alive today. That’s because Infinity War could end up grossing over $2 billion by the time all is said and done.

Even pre-Infinity War, we’ve seen how Marvel has altered a significant portion of the Hollywood landscape. Without saying the name of its great rival in comics, we can point to other examples: the Dark Universe and The Conjuring. One seems to have failed; the other, meanwhile, has a film about a nun character in progress and has not one, but two films about a creepy doll. It’s horror, so that counts as success.

But now, the long game of a decade has shown that it’ll make oodles of money — perhaps more than a revival of a dormant franchise, as Jurassic World. (And yes, I’ve complained about Jurassic World before.) So what does that mean? Studios already plan movies out years in advance, even if the public doesn’t know the exact titles right away.

But no studio seems to have taken the exact same approach as Marvel, where executives are talking about 2025 already, as Kevin Feige has said. (No, not even Lucasfilm, or at least not to the degree as Marvel does. We don’t even know if the Obi-Wan movie is real, while fans have used previous announcements to come up with post-Infinity War theories.) There’s a distinct sense of crafting that goes into the MCU that hasn’t been emulated yet.

At this point, it may be too late for anyone to catch up. After all, it usually doesn’t help to be second. But that hasn’t stopped others from trying anyway. Is that best for Hollywood as a whole?

Well, no. (Funnily enough, Joe Russo agrees.)

How would we get films like A Quiet Place if everything must be linked to something else? But even Quiet Place started life as being linked to Cloverfield, which makes you grateful that someone said “wait, that doesn’t make any sense” and kept it as its own thing. There’s room for a diversity of films and genres even within universes. Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther are vastly different movies even if they’re both part of the MCU.

There needs to be more than just franchises, though. It’s as simple as that. We love our superhero movies at Culturess. Still, we need time to breathe, even if Marvel doesn’t feel like giving it to us.

Next: The MCU movies ranked by hilarity

Infinity War hasn’t even made $2 billion yet, so this may feel premature. But at the same time, if we’re already thinking about it… then one has to suspect that everyone is thinking about it.