The Record-Breaking Box Office Of ‘Avengers: Endgame,’ By The (Huge) Numbers
Chris Evans as Captain America in Avengers: Endgame. And yes, Cap, these are apparently the real numbers.
Film Frame/Marvel Studios
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Film Frame/Marvel Studios
Avengers: Endgame is the culmination of a hugely profitable series of films that began with Iron Man in 2008. It makes sense that the opening weekend of the concluding chapter — which also happens to be a very good movie with a 96 percent critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes — would make a lot of money. But if there’s a place in box office coverage for “whoa, Nellie” anymore, it is perhaps here. And so let us say: Whoa, Nellie.
It’s already made an estimated one billion dollars around the world. Well, $1.2 billion, actually. So, you know. Big. Even for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its gargantuan hauls, this was a gargantuan haul.
Just how big was opening weekend, domestically? Well, Thursday night previews earned $60 million, which is more money than all but 11 2019 films have made in their entire runs. The weekend as a whole is estimated at $350 million, which makes it — per Disney’s eager press release breaking down everything but the inevitable popcorn shortage — the first film to ever make $300 million on opening weekend. Friday, it had the biggest single day for any film ever, making $156.7 million in one day. It also had the biggest Saturday ever and the biggest Sunday ever. This is all in spite of the disadvantage of being three hours long, which might limit the number of showings — except that it’s being shown at a record-breaking 4,662 theaters. It’s an opening weekend that beat the last Avengers film, Avengers: Infinity War, by more than $100 million.
(One funny grace note to all this is that in second place in U.S. box office this weekend was the MCU’s Captain Marvel with an estimated $8.05 million, meaning that the same character appears in the two top films, even if the one in first place made more than 40 times as much this weekend as the one in second place.)
Avengers: Endgame is also an international smash: biggest international opening weekend ever on the whole, and record-breaking weekends in China and 43 other markets (Spain! Korea! Brazil! And so forth!). Disney calls the Chinese box office receipts of $330.5 million “astounding,” if it does say so itself.
According to box office site Box Office Mojo, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is now a 22-film series that’s about to pass $20 billion internationally.
Whoa, Nellie.
U.S. Economy Grows 3.2% During First Quarter Of 2019
The U.S. economy started 2019 with a bang, growing at a better-than-expected rate of 3.2% in the first three months of the year.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The U.S. economy started 2019 with a bang. A report from the Commerce Department shows the economy grew at an annual rate of 3.2% percent in the first three months of the year; that’s a full point faster than it was growing at the end of last year. And as NPR’s Scott Horsley reports, it’s an encouraging sign that while other economies around the world may be tapping the brakes, the U.S. is still humming along.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: The first quarter growth rate of 3.2% was better than anyone expected – well, almost anyone.
KEVIN HASSETT: Do you remember what our forecast for this year is? Three point two. And what was the first quarter?
HORSLEY: White House economist Kevin Hassett hit the bull’s-eye with his growth forecast. And while there’s no guarantee the rest of the year will see similar growth, President Trump couldn’t help gloating, as he prepared to board his helicopter outside the White House.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re knocking it out of the park, as they say, and we’re very happy about that.
HORSLEY: Many forecasters outside the administration say first quarter growth was boosted by temporary factors, and they don’t believe the economy will continue to grow at this pace. Economist Ben Herzon of IHS Markit notes, with demand weak early in the year, many of the goods produced during the first quarter piled up in warehouses and on store shelves.
BEN HERZON: I think what’s going to happen is, after a first quarter burst in inventory building, that inventory building’s going to slow down and contribute to a slowing in overall GDP growth.
HORSLEY: White House economist Hassett agrees – sometimes a buildup in inventory is followed by a slump in production. But he’s counting on a jump in demand the rest of this year to keep factories and other producers busy.
HASSETT: So I’m not as concerned about the inventories as I normally would be.
HORSLEY: Consumer spending did start to heat up towards the end of the quarter, as shoppers set aside their winter concerns over the government shutdown and stock market gyrations. Jack Kleinhenz of the National Retail Federation says consumers do have the money to spend more, thanks to a healthy job market.
JACK KLEINHENZ: Every new job, we get new income into the economy, and that creates more spending.
HORSLEY: Wage gains have been solid, if not spectacular, and some of the biggest raises have gone to those at the bottom of the income ladder, who are especially likely to spend the extra cash. Fears of an all-out trade war also eased during the first quarter. Chief economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics says most observers are now counting on the president to strike a deal with China and avoid a costly escalation of tariffs.
MARK ZANDI: If he fails to follow through on that, I think there’s going to be a lot disappointment around the globe, stock markets will fall, and the year is going to turn out to be much less positive than anyone would expect at this point.
HORSLEY: Trade talks with China resume in Beijing next week. White House economist Hassett says the two sides are making progress towards an agreement.
HASSETT: Last time I used a wedding analogy – I said we’re at the point where we don’t want the groom to see the bride. But now I think we’re past that point. I think now we’re at the point where we don’t want Dustin Hoffman to show up at the wedding (laughter).
HORSLEY: Just like that scene from the classic movie, “The Graduate,” the course of the economy can offer unexpected twists. But for the first three months at least, 2019 got off to a good start. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIMON AND GARFUNKEL’S “MRS ROBINSON”)
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Selling A T-Rex On eBay
A recreation of the rare Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton currently up for grabs on eBay.
Alan Dietrich
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Alan Dietrich
More than 60 million years ago, the Tyrannosaurus rex roamed North America. Today, they’re fetching 7 figures from museums and private buyers all over the world. There is a thriving market for dinosaur fossils and T-Rex is at the top of the food chain… but some people say this market is bad for science.
Today on The Indicator: the economics of dinosaur fossils. How does one come to own a T-Rex? Who buys them? And… aren’t fossils priceless?
Music: “Dinosaur Rock”. Find us: Twitter / Facebook / Newsletter.
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Facebook Could Face Up To $5 Billion Fine For Privacy Violations
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the Facebook F8 developers conference on May 1, 2018, in San Jose, Calif.
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Facebook expects to pay a fine of up to $5 billion in a settlement with federal regulators. The tech giant disclosed that figure in its first-quarter 2019 financial results.
Facebook has been in negotiations with the Federal Trade Commission following concerns that the company violated a 2011 consent decree. Back then, company leaders promised to give consumers “clear and prominent notice” when sharing their data with others and to get “express consent.”
But, experts say, Facebook broke its promise. Just one example: giving user data to Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm that did work for the 2016 Trump campaign.
Facebook estimates the fine will be in the $3 billion to $5 billion range and has set aside $3 billion for payment. The company’s statement says, “The matter remains unresolved, and there can be no assurance as to the timing or the terms of any final outcome.”
This would not be the largest fine issued by the FTC. In 2016, the agency reached settlements with Volkswagen totaling up to $14.7 billion. Facebook’s total revenue for the first quarter stood at more than $15 billion. So whatever the final figure, the company has the money to pay for the estimated fine.
Facebook’s monthly active users stand at 2.38 billion, an increase of 8% year over year.
In an earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not discuss the settlement in any detail. He focused his remarks on outlining Facebook’s plans for growth, which include building a private messaging platform. He also pointed to the European model of privacy regulation as one that could work globally, if other countries chose to follow suit.
Drug Distributor And Former Execs Face First Criminal Charges In Opioid Crisis
Former Rochester Drug Co-Operative CEO Laurence Doud III, facing criminal charges stemming from the opioid crisis, leaves the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Tuesday.
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Kathy Willens/AP
A major pharmaceutical distribution company and two of its former executives are facing criminal charges for their roles in advancing the nation’s opioid crisis and profiting from it.
Rochester Drug Co-Operative Inc., one of the nation’s 10 largest pharmaceutical distributors in the U.S., its former CEO Laurence Doud III and former chief of compliance William Pietruszewski were charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled narcotics — oxycodone and fentanyl — for non-medical reasons and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
RDC and Pietruszewski are also charged with willfully failing to file suspicious order reports to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Between May 2012 and November 2016, the company received and filled over 1.5 million orders for controlled substances from its pharmacy customers. However, it reported only four suspicious orders to the DEA. According to the complaint, the company failed to report at least 2,000 suspicious orders.
“This prosecution is the first of its kind: executives of a pharmaceutical distributor and the distributor itself have been charged with drug trafficking, trafficking the same drugs that are fueling the opioid epidemic that is ravaging this country,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman said in a statement. “Our Office will do everything in its power to combat this epidemic, from street-level dealers to the executives who illegally distribute drugs from their boardrooms.”
Geoffrey Berman, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, speaking at a news conference announcing charges against Rochester Drug Co-Operative Inc.
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Pietruszewski, 53, pleaded guilty last week. Doud, 75, surrendered to authorities and pleaded not guilty in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday.
Both executives face maximum sentences of life in prison and a mandatory minimum prison term of 10 years on the drug trafficking charges. They face a maximum five years in prison on the charge of defrauding the government.
The Rochester, N.Y.,-based company is a middleman between drug manufacturers and local independent pharmacies. It supplied more than 1,300 pharmacies and earned $1 billion per year during the relevant time period.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s statement:
“From 2012 to 2016, RDC’s sales of oxycodone tablets grew from 4.7 million to 42.2 million — an increase of approximately 800 percent — and during the same period RDC’s fentanyl sales grew from approximately 63,000 dosages in 2012 to over 1.3 million in 2016 — an increase of approximately 2,000 percent. During that same time period, Doud’s compensation increased by over 125 percent, growing to over $1.5 million in 2016.”
The company has agreed to pay a $20 million fine and submitted to three years of independent compliance monitoring.
“Today’s charges should send shock waves throughout the pharmaceutical industry reminding them of their role as gatekeepers of prescription medication,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Ray Donovan.
“We made mistakes,” company spokesman Jeff Eller said in a statement. “RDC understands that these mistakes, directed by former management, have serious consequences. We accept responsibility for those mistakes. We can do better, we are doing better, and we will do better.”
The Traffic Tariff
Darius Rafieyan
As cities all over the world grow, they’re struggling with crowded streets and polluted air. New York City has decided to try out one possible solution: congestion pricing. Drivers will soon be charged a toll to enter certain crowded neighborhoods. Officials hope it will cut down on traffic and bring in badly needed funds to help repair the city’s public transportation system.
Today on the show, Stacey Vanek Smith and Darius Rafieyan venture out into Midtown Manhattan during rush hour to see if congestion pricing is the solution that New York needs.
Music: “Jet Set Go”. Find us: Twitter / Facebook / Newsletter.
Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, PocketCasts and NPR One.
WalletHub CEO: Growing Credit Card Debt Is An Economic Warning Sign
NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with Odysseas Papadimitriou, CEO of WalletHub, about growing credit card debt and what it means for the economy.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
The U.S. economy is going strong with record low unemployment, but that’s not the whole story. Many Americans got smaller tax refunds this year. Wage growth is stagnant. And credit card debt is on the rise.
ODYSSEAS PAPADIMITRIOU: There is a significant group of our society that is kind of left behind.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That’s Odysseas Papadimitriou, CEO of the personal finance website WalletHub. We’ve heard about credit card debt being a problem for middle and working classes before, but it’s now become an issue for the upper-middle class. Papadimitriou says they’re in the sweet spot for this type of easy lending.
PAPADIMITRIOU: It is the consumer group that wants to take on some additional debt and also has the income and the assets to justify so.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: On top of that, recent numbers show that people approaching retirement age are also accruing larger amounts of credit card debt.
PAPADIMITRIOU: You know, they’re away from retirement enough years to feel like, I will make up for it later on. Let me go and make this purchase. And then they end up later on in retirement with credit card debt.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Credit card debt is at its highest level since 2008. WalletHub is projecting that each U.S. household will have an average of $9,300 in credit card debt by the end of the year. And Papadimitriou believes it’s hitting a breaking point.
PAPADIMITRIOU: We start defaulting. Credit card companies stop lending. More people get into trouble. Interest rates go up. Penalty fees go up. And you get into a vicious cycle…
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That could have larger repercussions.
PAPADIMITRIOU: …Which is, obviously, negative for the economy as well with spending power going down.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The level of credit card debt is one economic warning sign. But Papadimitriou worries that lawmakers and consumers aren’t taking it seriously. He says it could take the threat of a recession to get them to act.
PAPADIMITRIOU: We’ll be going into a recession the next couple of years. I think the question is, when? If that recession comes before the election, I think, absolutely, it’s going to be a major political headwind, if you will. If it comes afterwards, it’s going to benefit, I think, the current administration.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: His advice – just because you have credit available to you doesn’t mean you should use it.
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Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Maxwell House Partners With Amazon For A ‘Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Passover Haggadah
With over 50 million printed copies, Maxwell House has released a new edition of their Haggadah, designed for fans of the Amazon show, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Last night marked the beginning of Passover, the holiday when Jews gather together to retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. To do this, you need a haggadah. And as NPR’s Eliza Dennis reports, a common one in the U.S. comes from a place you might not expect.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Smell good, ground coffee. That’s Maxwell House coffee.
ELIZA DENNIS, BYLINE: That’s right. Maxwell House is the producer of a popular haggadah in the U.S. Let me explain. The haggadah is a book of texts used during the Seder, Passover’s ritual meal. And Maxwell House produced their haggadah as a marketing tool.
JENNY SINGER: The Maxwell House haggadah is the longest-running sales promotion in advertising history.
DENNIS: That’s Jenny Singer. She is the deputy life and features editor for The Forward, a Jewish American publication. And she knows a thing or two about the Maxwell House haggadah. It all started with the 1920s ad-man Joseph Jacobs. He realized that his fellow Jews weren’t drinking coffee because they thought it wasn’t kosher for Passover. So he turned to Maxwell House.
SINGER: They got this kind of obscure Lower Eastside rabbi to give them the OK to say that coffee is kosher for Passover.
DENNIS: Joseph Jacobs saw an opportunity.
SINGER: You buy a pound of Maxwell, you get a free haggadah.
DENNIS: And people did. Maxwell House has printed more than 55 million haggadot.
SINGER: You open it up. And there are these gorgeous illustrations of Moses parting the Red Sea, and then the Israelites sitting down to drink Maxwell House coffee on the other side.
DENNIS: And it hasn’t changed much. The Maxwell House haggadah has only been updated to modernize some of the language and to include gender neutral pronouns. But this year, there’s a special edition.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL”)
RACHEL BROSNAHAN: (As Midge Maisel) And crazy, the famous mad divorcee of the upper west side.
DENNIS: That’s Midge Maisel, the main character of the hit TV show “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” set in 1950s New York City. She’s a Jewish housewife who makes brisket during the day and does standup comedy at night. And this year, Maxwell House and Amazon, which produces the show, teamed up on an updated version of the haggadah. It’s Pepto Bismol pink. It includes a recipe for Midge’s famous brisket, and is complete with wine stains and illustrations of the cast members.
ALEX BORSTEIN: I didn’t know Maxwell House still existed. I’m not even joking. Like, the coffee that I drink at this point are just always those little pod things. But I happily ordered some coffee.
DENNIS: That’s Alex Borenstein, the actress that plays Susie Myerson, Midge’s fearless agent.
BORSTEIN: She’s a little Jewish person.
DENNIS: And so is Borstein. She actually grew up using the Maxwell House haggadah.
BORSTEIN: It’s a long one. It’s the dry one. It’s the – it’s the fire and brimstone.
DENNIS: And what would her character Susie think?
BORSTEIN: Susie would be like, oh, my God, 63 pages? What, are we slaves again? How long are we stuck here? This is 40 years.
DENNIS: Borstein and a few other cast members will be having a Masel Passover tonight. And they’ll be using the Maxwell haggadot – well, mostly.
BORSTEIN: I like to add my own flavor.
DENNIS: Maybe we’ll see that version next year.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL “)
BROSNAHAN: (As Midge Maisel) You’ve been a great audience, ladies and gentlemen. That’s it for me. My name is Mrs. Maisel. Thank you, and good night.
DENNIS: Eliza Dennis, NPR News.
Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
The Mueller Report Is Free To Read, But It’s Also A Bestseller
A day after the release of the redacted Mueller report, book versions of it occupied the top spots on Amazon’s bestseller list.
Amazon/Screenshot by NPR
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Amazon/Screenshot by NPR
You can read the redacted Mueller report right now, free, on the Department of Justice website. Or you can read it here on NPR.org.
But perhaps reading 448-page PDFs isn’t your thing. Or you don’t have enough ink to print all those pages, and someone would notice if you stood next to the office printer for the next 45 minutes or so, adding new reams of paper, only to see it print out black boxes obscuring portions of the text from the public.
Well, you wouldn’t be alone: The Mueller report on the 22-month probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election is now a bestselling book, even though its contents are free and widely available.
A day after the report was released by the Justice Department, paperback versions occupied the top two spots on Amazon’s bestseller list.
The top spot is occupied by a version published by Skyhorse Publishing, which includes an introduction by Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer and Trump supporter who has been critical of the Mueller investigation.
Skyhorse Group Editorial Director Mark Gompertz says people just prefer reading in book form.
“We have our typesetters sitting here doing it in a proper typographical way,” Gompertz tells NPR. “That’s a lot easier for people to read when it’s set nicely. We have a team of nine people that will be proofreading throughout the day and night if that’s what it takes.”
The second spot on Amazon’s list is occupied by a version of the report published by Scribner in partnership with The Washington Post. Their book includes extra content: a list of the major characters, major Justice Department filings and a timeline.
“We thought we could provide not just the Mueller report, but a lot of useful and valuable context around it, so that it would be all the more useful to readers,” Scribner Vice President and Editor-in-Chief Colin Harrison tells NPR.
A version of the report published by Melville House was at No. 9 on Amazon’s list Friday afternoon. That book contains only the report itself.
“It’s our belief that we should respect the reader and give them the report and nothing but the report,” Melville House Co-Publisher Dennis Johnson says.
But still, he says, he hopes a lot of people read it online. “That would be great. The more people that read it the better. But the fact of the matter is, not everybody has access to a computer. And reading it online may not be the ideal way to read it,” Johnson says.
The Mueller report isn’t the first time a government document has gone mainstream. The Warren commission report on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Starr report discussing President Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and the 9/11 commission’s report all found wide readership.
There are are additional perks to physical books, too: They can assume a kind of weight that PDFs rarely do.
“I still have the copy of the Pentagon Papers that my parents bought for our home library thinking that was just an important historic document,” Johnson says. “And I’d like to think that this one is up there with that in importance.”
A Brief History Of Income Taxes
When Benjamin Franklin said the only two certainties in life are death and taxes, he wasn’t talking about income taxes. America didn’t really even have an income tax until 1913. Up until then, the U.S. relied on tariffs to raise revenue.
On today’s Indicator, we explore the history of the income tax in the U.S. to find out how and why the government came up with the idea of taxing people’s pay.
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