And 362/365 is between 350-385 right?
There is no "alleged Avengers boost" Avengers is the top grossing movie of 2012 and no. 3 all time. Robert Downey Jr. was no. 1 on the billboard of that movie, even if he shared screen time with all the actors.
Again, I don't take anything for granted, my prediction is based on this trailer raising the stakes in a way that we may have not seen in any Marvel film, including Avengers. However the film has to live up to the hype. Avengers lived up to the hype and it paid off. This film has to as well.
1B WW is not a rediculous prediction, in fact I'd say 1B is what 800M used to be 4-5 years ago.
Indeed, but then anything between 365 and 385 will already be a growth from the previous installement in the franchise.
As for the Avengers boost, I used the world "alleged" because, as of today, you cannot predict how much it will impact the solo franchises, if at all. Every assumption you can make that there will be an influence beyond a slight boost to the OWE numbers is, at best, a shot in the dark.
Now, I think that Raimi's Spider-Man franchise should come to mind. Despite the record breaking first installement, despite the insane hype, the overwhelming critical response (and ticket price inflation) Spider-Man 2 never crossed the 400M mark.
Maybe the market was less inclined towards another Spider-Man flicks (or cbms in general), maybe there was too much competition, maybe the 2 years time between SM1 and SM2 was too short so people didn't feel the need to see another Spider-Man movie so soon after the last one, the only thing we can say for sure is that, for some reasons, the movie never clicked with audiences as much as its predecessor did despite being better. Point being that, the 400M target in the domestic market remains a milestone (even moreso than the billion mark WW wich have been crossed by 5 films in the last two years while only 3 grossed more than 400 million domestically) and that any movie (even coming from the most successful franchises) actually needs a favourable conjunction of factors (and a willing market) to get to it.
I most definitely think that it is way too early to tell wether or not Iron Man 3 will benefit from such a conjonction (and sure thing is that it'll face much more direct competition than any of the first two Iron Man movies or even The Avengers) and wether or not the market will be as inclined towards cbms as it is today.
Having said that, given the growth rates of several major overseas market, 1B WW is definitely not an absurde prediction. To be clear, I don't see this happening but I would be less surprised to see the the movie gross 1B WW than I would be to see it gross over 400M domestically.