If you’re living in the U.S. and just can’t wait any longer to see The Avengers, there’s an alternative: you can always dust your passport off an head out to somewhere like France or Australia and catch it a few days before your friends. That’s right, as part of their strategy to combat international piracy, American movie studios have begun releasing tent-pole titles to foreign markets before their U.S. release date.

The latest blockbuster to get the foreign release red carpet treatment is the highly-anticipated Avengers movie, from Marvel Comics’ movie-making department; and according to reports, The Avengers is in the process of breaking a number of foreign box office records. Deadline.com reveals:

Still more countries are reporting grosses, and the superhero super-blockbuster opened #1 in every foreign market… Overseas, Disney is reporting $185.1M box office in the film’s first 5 days of release in 39 territories… The Avengers scoored the biggest opening days in New Zealand, Taiwan, Iceland and Malaysia.

Not only that, but in the United States, ticket pre-sales for The Avengers are doing better numbers than all of the other Marvel movies combined:

…Avengers is selling 3,995% more tickets than Captain America, 1,034% more tickets than Thor, 114% more tickets than Iron Man 2, and 1,406% more tickets than Iron Man at the same point in the sales cycle…

Another good thing about The Avengers coming out is it will finally put an end to all that “Think Like A Man is still number one at the box office!!!” excitement, as if there’s something substantial about that nugget of information. Not to be a killjoy, but here’s something to keep in mind about TLaM’s box office success. To date, the Twitter-friendly movie has made $60 million. Now, with a only a $12 million budget, that’s nothing to shake your head at. Clearly, the movie has succeeded in making a substantial profit. All of these are good things.

With that in mind, The Avengers is on pace to make $125 million during its opening weekend, clearly indicating there are levels of success (woo) and then there are levels of success (WOO HOO!!!!). The Avengers is clearly heading for the latter level, something the foreign box office receipts indicate quite nicely.

To further build the hype surrounding this Friday’s release, Marvel released a new teaser short for your consumption: