While some Marvel films tend to face the wrath of public demurral, some suffer from an underwhelming box-office performance, and some have the rotten luck of undergoing both of the former. Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man 3 is a classic example that not only tasted the bitterness of the audience but also made poor numbers to add to its demolishment.
And then there are those projects on the other end of the scale that leave an indelible imprint on fans, so much so that people would sell their souls to be able to rewatch these movies again for the first time. Metaphorically speaking, of course. One such film happens to be Avengers: Endgame, which turned out to be stratospherically successful worldwide. So, it’s baffling, to say the least, that one of the members of its star cast was fully expecting the movie to get blown to smithereens.
Elizabeth Olsen Had Little Faith in Avengers: Endgame‘s Success
Elizabeth Olsen has been the certified MCU witch for roughly 8 years now. A naturally-born sorceress, Wanda Maximoff is a Sokovian witch who can harness Chaos magic and channel it in the form of telepathy or telekinesis.
While she technically first appeared in the post-credit scenes of 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Olsen was fully introduced in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. Ever since then, Olsen’s Scarlet Witch has played a central role in an array of MCU plotlines, especially in Avengers: Endgame, wherein she singlehandedly incapacitated Thanos, albeit briefly, before the intergalactic warlord managed to vanquish her attacks. Speaking of which, the WandaVision star was fully expecting Endgame to be labeled as a flop.
During an appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, Olsen, 34, admitted that when she’d watched the premiere of the Russo brothers’ film, she believed it was going to be a major box office bomb. “I was like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know about this one,'” she said.
“I saw Avengers: Endgame, and I looked around me, and I said, ‘Is this our first flop?'”
Her fear of the film doing atrociously at the theatres spiraled so out of control that the Wind River actress decided to stop attending MCU premieres altogether. “I just decided I can’t watch these Marvel movies at a premiere anymore,” she told Fallon after revealing she’d refused to watch the premiere of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) for the same reason. “Every time, I just watch it, and I look around me, and I’m like, ‘Well, it’s our first flop,’ like, every time.” To her surprise, however, Endgame turned out to be an MCU blockbuster phenomenon, if there ever was one.
See also: Real Reason Why Robert Downey Jr. Says “I love you 3,000” in Avengers: Endgame
Avengers: Endgame Broke Several Box Office Records
Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, and produced by Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, Avengers: Endgame was one of the most lucrative MCU projects to ever have been made. Not only did it set the record for having the highest-grossing opening weekend in its domestic circuit of about $357 million but Endgame also managed to recuperate both production and global marketing costs almost too effortlessly.
See also: MCU Spent $91 Million Less Money on Avengers: Endgame Than the Most Expensive Star Wars Movie
Starring Robert Downey Jr. along with Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson, the 2019 movie got crowned as the biggest domestic hit in over three years after earning $771 million in North America alone. Not to mention it grossed approximately $2.8 billion at the global box office. The movie was literally running for nearly 18 hours a day back when it hit the cinemas, so it’s safe to say that Olsen’s fears were wholly unwarranted since the movie was an astronomical victory for Marvel Studios.
Avengers: Endgame is available on Disney +.
Source: The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon
