As the release date drew closer, the promotional campaign for The Avengers entered its final sprint.
On Marvel Comics' side, to coordinate with the film's promotion, a standalone Avengers comic was released. This comic told the story of a parallel-universe version of The Avengers: Captain America had grown old, Iron Man was dead, and Thor had become a female Thor.
Hawkeye and Black Widow were both agents of an organization called Hydra, embedded within S.H.I.E.L.D., while the Hulk, Bruce Banner, was the main antagonist.
Marvel Comics had always liked to go wild in its comics. Many published issues often conflicted with one another or failed to line up properly.
As for this, Marvel usually explained everything away with the concept of parallel universes, which was enough to placate comic fans.
However, after Gilbert became the owner of Marvel, he made a concerted effort to change this situation. Gilbert required Marvel's comic artists and writers to sort out a single main-universe storyline.
Moreover, this main-universe story had to be coherent from beginning to end, with no obvious logical contradictions. Only after the comic storylines were fully organized could the next step of work begin.
This was also the reason why Marvel Studios had been established as early as 1996, yet Iron Man was not released until 2006.
Only by clearly sorting out the main universe's story could film projects be properly developed.
Of course, in order to coordinate with film promotion, Marvel Comics still frequently produced parallel-universe stories. For example, when Iron Man 2 was released, Marvel published a story featuring a female Iron Man.
They originally even wanted to create an Iron Man who was biologically male but psychologically female—commonly referred to as effeminate but this idea was vetoed by Gilbert without hesitation.
It might have been a bit sensitive, but Gilbert felt it was his responsibility to put a stop to excessive diversification.
In addition, one week before the film's release, Marvel Comics held a comic exhibition event in New York, inviting many professional and amateur comic artists to participate.
Gilbert and the entire Avengers cast attended the exhibition. At the event, Gilbert even showed off his own minimalist comic art style.
Because it was his personal work, as soon as it was finished, people immediately offered high prices to buy it, with the price once being bid up to over ten thousand dollars.
However, Marvel soon announced that it would establish a new comic exhibition hall, and this hand-drawn work by Gilbert would become part of the exhibition's permanent collection.
Without a doubt, this was also meant to build hype for the film.
Beyond that, many comic fans also noticed that the character designs in recently released Marvel comics had begun to resemble the movie characters more closely.
In particular, the comic version of Iron Man, Tony Stark, looked almost exactly like Robert Downey Jr., as if they were cast from the same mold.
This did not constitute an infringement of the actors' portrait rights. As early as when the actors signed their contracts, there was already a clause granting image authorization.
And the actors had no choice but to accept it—when facing Marvel Studios, they had no leverage at all.
In other words, the era of Hollywood movie stars was gradually fading. Tom Hanks had reduced his workload and no longer enjoyed the glory of the 1990s.
His most recent box-office hits were still films he made with Gilbert and Tom Cruise, such as The False, as well as The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons.
Tom Cruise's box-office appeal remained quite strong. He had not gone through the low point of his previous life, and maintaining a happy marriage with Nicole Kidman had given his personal image tremendous value.
Although the media often criticized his religious beliefs, it did not significantly affect his overall public image.
Moreover, after learning from Gilbert and having a pair of children, Tom Cruise directly leveraged his influence to seize control within Scientology.
Nowadays, within Scientology, he was second only to the pope himself—even the pope had to treat Tom Cruise with great courtesy.
With the older generation of Hollywood directors and actors gradually aging, those who still possessed strong box-office appeal were essentially just Gilbert, Tom Cruise, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Even figures such as Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, and Matt Damon were showing clear signs of declining appeal.
As for Marvel superhero films, while actors were important, they were absolutely not the most important factor. Under Marvel's system, it was the characters that elevated the actors, not the actors who elevated the characters.
Kevin Feige had once said that even if Iron Man were played by a different actor, the film would still succeed.
Of course, niche films had little to do with actors as well. Their inherent limitations meant that niche films were not destined to be major box-office hits or mainstream trends.
The Avengers did not fall into that category. It was a highly entertaining commercial blockbuster, one that was bound to be loved by the mainstream market and audiences.
On the eve of the film's release, mainstream critics Peter and the sexy Rebecca both wrote preview articles.
In addition, the two of them also posted videos on Watermelon Video, explaining why The Avengers was a movie that absolutely had to be seen in theaters.
In her video, sexy Rebecca showed off her great figure, with shelves behind her filled with various movie-related merchandise—necklaces, desk clocks, figurines, and more.
In a pleasant voice, she said: "As a seasoned movie fan, I watch about eighty films a year on average, so my viewing volume is relatively high.
But the only films worth buying a ticket and going into a theater for are commercial blockbusters. Other types of films can be completely watched through online platforms or discs."
Many of her channel's followers deeply agreed. Clearly, The Avengers was exactly that kind of movie.
In order to allow more movie fans to enjoy this spectacular film, Disney's distribution work was executed extremely well.
In its opening week, the film would launch in 4,400 theaters across North America, while at the same time being released simultaneously with North America in 88 countries and regions worldwide.
In addition, the film's roadshow promotions covered major cities across Asia and Europe, Latin America, and Oceania, including London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, and other cities.
In East Asia, there were also stops in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, and more.
It is worth mentioning that because the film contained scenes set in India, a roadshow tour in Mumbai, India, had originally been arranged as well.
However, after India's film censorship authorities reviewed the submitted version of The Avengers, they believed that the film insulted India's national image. Not only did they refuse to allow the cast and crew to promote the film in Mumbai, but they also cut all India-related scenes and delayed the release by three weeks.
India had always been such a peculiar place, so this was not particularly surprising.
One week before release, The Avengers officially opened for pre-sales.
On the very first day of pre-sales, it directly created 36 million dollars in sales. By four o'clock in the afternoon on the day of the film's premiere, pre-sale box office had already reached 78 million dollars.
The film also set a small record, as the previous highest pre-sale box office had been Transformers 2 with 68.5 million dollars.
Pre-sales in overseas regions were equally smooth. Midnight screenings in the traditional three major English-speaking regions had long since sold out. Other regions such as France and Germany, as well as East Asian markets like China and South Korea, were also extremely popular.
For the opening weekend's three days, tickets for both the standard 3D version and the IMAX version were even hard to come by, and scalpers snapping up tickets also appeared.
Here, it is once again worth mentioning that Japan. As everyone knows, superhero films have never worked well there. Even though Gilbert was very famous in that country, and there was free promotion from Sakai Noriko and the others.
Still, people in that country might simply prefer animated films, or perhaps action movies of a different kind.
However, it did not matter much. After all, it had once been the second-largest single overseas market and could still contribute a considerable amount of box office revenue.
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