Superhero movies offer the ultimate escape, taking audiences to a world where they can always be saved by a superhuman force with good on their side. Here, we’re taking a look at two superhero films that have both achieved huge success in recent years, The Avengers and Batman: The Dark Knight Rises. Both films are classic superhero adventures, packed with action, intrigue and extreme powers. But which was the more successful in terms of hard profit for its studio?
The Avengers, based on the original Marvel comic books, was released in 2012 by The Walt Disney Company. Samuel Jackson plays Nick Fury, director of SHIELD, who must pull together a motley crew of super heroes to defeat evil Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and protect global security. Other big names who appeared in the film include Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man, Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow and Chris Evans as Captain America. Batman: The Dark Knight Rises was also released in 2012. The studio behind this film was Time Warner with Christopher Nolan returning as director having already directed the first two films in the Dark Knight trilogy. The title role went to Christian Bale, who depicts a Batman emerging from the reclusive life he’s lived to face a new enemy, Bane, played by Tom Hardy, who has devastating plans to destroy Gotham City. Batman: The Dark Knight Rises was just the thirteenth film of all time to hit the $1 billion mark. However, the film did not perform as well as The Avengers did. That film’s global box office takings surpassed $1.5 billion. In Australia too, The Avengers was the overall winner, taking $54.4 million to Batman: The Dark Knight Rise’s $44.1. Significantly, the two films were made on similar budgets; IG show Disney spent $220 million for The Avengers and $230 million was spent on Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.
So that’s how the individual films did, but as market experts like IG know, the most revealing figures are the studios’ share prices and profits. In the first seven days following the two films releases, each of their respective studios saw their share price rise by very similar levels.
Time Warner’s share price increased by 30.6%, while Disney’s rose by 31.9%. When we look at profit, the figures are $5.92 billion to $5.6 billion. However, it must be noted that in reality, the figures represent an overall win for Disney. That’s because, thanks to The Avengers’ release in 2012, the studio achieved record profits. Additionally, between buying the rights to the Avengers films in 2009 and the release of the second installment, Avengers: The Age of Ultron in 2015, Disney’s share price growth was a massive 250%.
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