Over the weekend the movie held the #1 spot at the box office for the third week in a row this past weekend; that's great news for them, but really bad news for Battleship, the movie based on the Hasbro board game. Battleship, which was expected to gross somewhere between $35 and $40 million dollars over the weekend, brought in only 25.3 domestically -- not a good sign for a movie that cost well over $200 to produce and market. Meanwhile, The Avengers held the top spot at #1 falling only 47% from the previous week with $55.1 million. This means that this monster of a film has totaled about $1.18 billion worldwide. But what does it take to make a movie like The Avengers? We can't give all the credit to Joss Whedon (even if he did approve everything we saw in the final product); you see, there's a whole lot of work and a lot of other creative minds involved to get to the final product.

To make a movie like The Avengers, there is a lot of work that needs to happen behind the scenes -- a lot that audiences may not even realize. The vision for so many of those action scenes we saw had to come from somewhere; so if you ever wondered "how did they make that scene crazy scene," or "how did they come up with those amazing costumes," well, we've got your answer. The credit for the detail that went into making the movie goes to the many artists that designed everything from costumes, to weapons, to the backgrounds and even the overall layout of the film. And while the end result is absolutely amazing, it's also a hell of a lot of fun seeing how so many creative minds got to that point.

Below we have a tremendous gallery of images from background designs to character costumes, to weapons for you to feast your eyes on. We've separated the galleries by artist and linked to their respective personal pages. Some of these guys, like Josh Nizzi and Justin Sweet have even worked in comics before -- which is pretty cool.

== TEASER ==

Senior Concept Illustrator Raj Rihal illustrated many of the backgrounds seen in The Avengers. Below is background concept art of everything from scenes of Star Tower, to moments on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier. Can you identify all the scenes?

Concept artist Josh Nizzi designed the chariots that the Chitauri used to hover across New York City in the film's final scene. Do any of these images remind you of moments you saw in the movie?

Artist Justin Sweet was responsible for designing the Chitauri themselves. Here we get to see a lot of the designs for these villains that didn't make it into the film. Is there one design in particular that you feel would have been better for the Chitauri, or do you like the one they chose for the film?

Concept artist Fabian Lacey developed the design for Hawkeye, his arrows as well as Iron Man's "arc reactor." The result is the sleek, stylish design we saw for Hawkeye in the film.

Clearly, The Avengers is the gift that just keeps on giving. We got an amazing movie, and now we get a peek at some really breathtaking concept art for the film. What do you think of this, though? Do you recognize each background? Can you identify the scenes where they are from? What do you think of some of the concept art that didn't make it into the film?

Source: Variety, i09