These are years that are absolute powerhouses when it comes to superhero/comic book movies. It felt like every single movie that dropped did extremely well. This unfortunately was hugely impacted by Covid the following year and it has never recovered fully since.
Today, we’ll take a look at both of the years and see which one was actually the best and came out with the most money at the box office.
Before we start. This will include Marvel, DC, Star Wars, and anything else in that realm. It will also only be live-action movies only and won’t include Into the Spider-Verse. I’ve added a table below with each film we’ll be looking at.
Movies (8v8)
| 2018 | 2019 |
|---|---|
| Black Panther | Avengers: Endgame |
| Avengers: Infinity War | Captain Marvel |
| Deadpool 2 | Star Wars Episode XI: The Rise of Skywalker |
| Ant-Man and the Wasp | Spider-Man: Far From Home |
| Solo: A Star Wars Story | Joker |
| Venom | Shazam! |
| Aquaman | Pokémon: Detective Pikachu |
| Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald | Godzilla: King of the Monsters |
As you can see above. I have pitted 8 movies from 2018 against 8 from 2019. I have pitted movies I believe fall into the realm of superhero/comic books including Detective Pikachu. I will now look at 2018 and each individual movie along with the overall cost. Please be aware, I am using Box Office Mojo for the source.
2018 individual numbers
- Black Panther (Marvel)
- $1,346,913,161
- Avengers: Infinity War (Marvel)
- $2,048,359,754
- Deadpool 2 (Fox)
- $734,546,611
- Ant-Man and the Wasp (Marvel)
- $622,674,139
- Solo: A Star Wars Story (Disney)
- $392,924,807
- Venom (Sony)
- $856,085,151
- Aquaman (DC)
- $1,148,461,807
- Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (Warner Bros.)
- $654,855,901
Total – $7,804,821,331
2019 individual numbers
- Avengers: Endgame
- $2,799,439,100
- Captain Marvel
- $1,128,274,794
- Star Wars Episode XI: The Rise of Skywalker
- $1,074,144,248
- Spider-Man: Far From Home
- $1,131,927,996
- Joker
- $1,074,251,311
- Shazam!
- $365,971,656
- Pokémon: Detective Pikachu
- $433,005,346
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters
- $386,600,138
Total – $7,393,587,589
Winner
Surprisingly, despite 2019 having 5 out of the 8 films to have over $1b compared to just 3 in 2018. 2018 defeats 2019 by $411,234,193. This does mean that 2018 was the most successful year for superhero/comic book movies in live-action. This is probably further helped by the fact 2018 only has 1 movie below $500m whereas 2019 has 3.
All in all, though, we can look back at both of these years as being hugely successful for us nerds. In total across both years, 16 movies, the total is $15,198,408,920.
The reason I wanted to do this article as we always talk about both of these years being the most successful in history so I wanted to see which year came out on top when it comes to the box office for films that fall in this type of category.
