It’s looking more and more like it’s going to be a big summer at the box office. If The Hunger Games passing $600 million wasn’t enough (I know, it came out in March—movies don’t follow the seasons accurately), now the ultimate in superhero movies, The Avengers, has arrived, and it is laying waste to all that stand before it.

The movie, which is directed by geek god Joss Whedon, had already scored multiple hundreds of millions of dollars overseas before finally being released this past Friday here in the States. In midnight screenings alone, The Avengers pulled in $18.7 million on its way to a $207.4 million opening weekend. For those keeping track, that makes it the ALL-TIME biggest domestic opening ever recorded, usurping Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2‘s $169.1 million opening weekend as if brushing a particle of dust off one’s shoulder.

If that’s not impressive enough, we’ve only just begun (cue Karen and her melodic carpenters). Overseas, the movie has shot past $447 million already, bringing its grand total to $654.8 million in just 12 days.

Now, when you’re blowing up the box office such as The Avengers currently is, you can’t help but wonder if it has a chance to touch the untouchable, the all-time domestic and worldwide champion: Avatar.

To compare the two, James Cameron’s sci-fi epic finished its theatrical run with a $749.7 million domestic gross (now at $760.5 million after a re-release), and a jaw-dropping $2 billion haul in foreign markets…giving it a brain-melting near $3 billion worldwide grand total.

The Avengers had a monster first weekend, but the numbers will only decline from here. It would take a lot of word of mouth praise (which is already happening) and a whole lot of repeat viewings from a bunch of fans for it to bring in another $500 million or so domestically, and another $1.5 billion or so internationally. It’s a feat any movie would struggle to come anywhere even remotely close to.

Then again we all thought the last box office king, Cameron’s decade-plus-long champ, Titanic, was also untouchable at $600 million domestically…until Avatar came along.

How many times will YOU see The Avengers? Do you think the record can fall?

[Source: Deadline]