Activision's Call of Duty franchise has been a behemoth in the gaming industry for well over a decade. But Activision has never been one to just stay in their lane and with each new release in the series, they thump their chests and boast how their game is the biggest entertainment launch of the year. Over the years, Call of Duty games have outearned even the biggest Hollywood blockbusters.
It appears that after years of sales success, Call of Duty has now become the largest entertainment franchise, topping Hollywood's biggest moneymakers, including the
Marvel Cinematic Universe and
Star Wars. In a press release detailing the reshuffling of some executive positions, Activision slipped in the noteworthy feat.
"As a franchise, Call of Duty has now generated more revenue than the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the box office, and double that of the cumulative box office of Star Wars."
To be fair, it's not exactly an apples to apples comparison. For starters, the main series alone launched in 2003 and has had a new entry every year since 2005. There's also been a number of spinoffs for handheld and mobile devices.
The MCU is now up to 20 films and the Disney-owned Marvel Studios is pushing out multiple films a year. But while the MCU will likely surpass
Call of Duty in terms of releases, the price of a new video game is roughly six times as much as a movie ticket.
Star Wars has been around since the late 70s, but still only has a handful of feature films that have released in theaters, so this is an even more unfair comparison to make. But even looking at the last two releases,
Solo: A Star Wars Story and
Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the franchise
grossed
nearly $1.8 billion globally from the two films.
While the sales success of
Call of Duty is absolutely something Activision should take pride in, there are so many different factors in comparing franchises that span different media verticals. And if we're looking further ahead, it's hard to imagine
Call of Duty will continue to reign supreme, especially at the rate in which we're getting new Marvel movies.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 may have grossed over $500 million in just three days, and could very well be approaching a number closer to $1 billion (we don't have specifics), the MCU in 2018 alone grossed over $4 billion in global revenue.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is now available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.