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Star Wars & Marvel Dominated Fandango’s Highest-Selling Films of the Decade
Fandango has revealed its top five ticket-selling movies during the 2010s were all either Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars films. Although the first Iron Man hit theaters in 2008, it wasn't until 2012's The Avengers that the MCU became the box office juggernaut it is today. The brand would go on to shape the greater filmmaking industry over the years that followed, inspiring just about every other Hollywood studio to try and launch a shared universe of their own using Marvel Studios' formula for success. At the end of the day, however, none of them fully succeeded and the landscape is now littered with abandoned would-be franchises (like the Dark Universe).
Coincidentally, the same year Earth's Mightiest Heroes all suited up for the first time on the big screen, Disney bought Lucasfilm and announced plans to start releasing new Star Wars films, beginning in 2015. And while the latter studio has since abandoned its own attempt to replicate the MCU model by releasing a new Star Wars movie (either a mainline installment or a spinoff) every twelve months, the galaxy far, far away managed to challenge its Marvel counterpart for commercial dominance in about half the time this past decade.
According to Fandango, Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the highest-selling title for the ticket vendor during the '10s. The highest-grossing movie of all time, Avengers: Endgame, came in second place on their list, followed by Star Wars: The Last Jedi (the second chapter in the sequel trilogy), Endgame's immediate predecessor Avengers: Infinity War, and Marvel's Black Panther solo film.
These results shouldn't come as any surprise, of course. All five of these releases rank among the fifteen highest-grossing films ever at the global box office, with The Force Awakens and Infinity War holding onto the #4 and #5 spots behind Endgame at number one. Interestingly, though, The Last Jedi sold more tickets through Fandango than 2019's The Lion King remake, even though the latter took home more worldwide and came out at a time when buying tickets through the vendor had become more common practice than ever before. It goes to show just much anticipation there was for the second entry in the sequel trilogy that Last Jedi came out on top in this area. Alternatively, December's The Rise of Skywalker matched The Last Jedi's pace in terms of ticket presales on Fandango right up until the last few days before its release, yet ultimately fell behind it.
It will be fascinating to see how things change in the 2020s, as far as Hollywood tentpoles and the box office go. Currently, Lucasfilm only has plans to release three Star Wars movies over the next decade and is placing the films on hiatus until December 2022. Marvel Studios, on the other hand, has no intention of slowing down its film production and expects to continue releasing 2-3 MCU installments (or more) a year for the foreseeable future. That doesn't at all guarantee they will continue to enjoy the same level of success they've had over the last eight years though, no matter how much they continue to evolve with the times. So who knows: ten years from now, Fandango's highest-selling titles of the decade may (or may not) look rather different from this list.
