I'm not saying they don't have to pay for marketing I'm just saying they are getting a lot of free marketing and advertising by doing cross promotions with other companies the most recent example is the cross promotion Audi had with Avengers 2.   That cross promotion started before trailers for Avengers 2 first started to show up on television.

Hollywood accounting and these supposed budgets are usually bull sh*t. I wouldn't buy too much into it, see:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121018/01054720744/hollywood-accounting-how-19-million-movie-makes-150-million-still-isnt-profitable.shtml

We're not talking about Hollywood accounting here but about what would, for example, warrant that a movie gets a sequel.

Avatar.

Avengers was expected to do a lot more on domestic and now it is faring lesser then TDKR on daily gross basis. It's lucky it opened well enough even when it was struck by Mayweather- Pacquio. Otherwise it would have ended up grossing lesser than TDKR on domestic.

Looks like Entourage will drop a lot over the weekend compared to its opening day still think it will make more the enough to not bomb hard.  To me a movie bombs hard if it makes less then its budget world wide.

Less then $9 million to go before Furious 7 passes the first Avengers movie should happen in three to four weeks.

It won't happen. The movie only grossed $2M worldwide this past week-end. In 3-4 weeks, its run will stop.

Unless Universal does a re-release for the film.

Not really it still hasn't had it discount theater run.  Plus it still doesn't have a firm release date for the Blu ray and DVD it will be in theaters longer then another 3-4 weeks.