...[the] franchise-capping Avengers was a carefully built phenomenon. Let?s go back a couple of years and pick up a single strand that led to it. Consider one of its predecessors, Iron Man 2, which began its run in the United States, on May 7, 2010, at 4,380 theaters. That?s only the number of theaters: multiplexes often put new movies on two or three, or even five or six, screens within the complex, so the actual number of screens was much higher?well over 6,000. The gross receipts for the opening weekend were $128 million. Yet those were not the movie?s first revenues. As a way of discouraging piracy and cheap street sale of the movie overseas, the movie?s distributor, Paramount Pictures, had opened Iron Man 2 a week earlier in many countries around the world. By May 9, at the end of the weekend in which the picture opened in America, cumulative worldwide theatrical gross was $324 million. By the end of its run, the cumulative total had advanced to $622 million. Let?s face it: big numbers are impressive, no matter what produced them.
The worldwide theatrical gross of Iron Man 2 served as a branding operation for what followed?sale of the movie to broadcast and cable TV, and licensing to retail outlets for DVD rentals and purchase. Iron Man 2 was itself part of a well-developed franchise (the first Iron Man came out in 2008). The hero, Tony Stark, a billionaire industrialist-playboy, first appeared in a Marvel comic book in 1963 and still appears in new Marvel comics. By 2010, rattling around stores and malls all over the world, there were also Iron Man video games, soundtrack albums, toys, bobblehead dolls, construction sets, dishware, pillows, pajamas, helmets, t-shirts, and lounge pants. There was a hamburger available at Burger King named after Mickey Rourke, a supporting player in Iron Man 2. Companies such as Audi, LG Mobile, 7-Eleven, Dr. Pepper, Oracle, Royal Purple motor oil, and Symantec?s Norton software signed on as ?promotional partners,? issuing products with the Iron Man logo imprinted somewhere on the product or in its advertising. In effect, all of American commerce was selling the franchise. All of American commerce sells every franchise.