Let’s be real. When Marvel announced it was putting Avengers: Endgame back in theaters seven years after it first dropped, a lot of us figured it would be a quiet little cash grab. Everybody has seen it. It’s been on Disney+ forever. Who is paying movie ticket prices to watch Tony snap his fingers again?
Turns out, a lot of people.
Avengers: Endgame Encore opened Friday, September 25 and went straight to number 1 at the box office, pulling in about $11.2 million on opening day. That’s more than every brand new movie in theaters this weekend.
The Breakdown
Endgame Encore didn’t just sneak into the top spot. It beat a stacked Friday lineup of fresh releases:
- Avengers: Endgame Encore: about $11.2 million
- Primetime (A24, new): about $8.5 million
- Heart of the Beast (new): about $7.45 million
- Resident Evil (second weekend): about $6.9 million
Before it even officially opened, Endgame Encore picked up about $3.8 million from preview showings alone. For a movie that came out in 2019, those are wild numbers.
Why People Showed Up
Marvel was smart with this one. Every Endgame Encore screening comes with an exclusive preview of Avengers: Doomsday, the next big Avengers movie hitting theaters December 18. So fans aren’t just rewatching Endgame. They’re getting a first look at what’s next, on the big screen, before anybody else.
That’s the play. Get people back in the seats, remind them how big these Avengers movies feel in a theater, and build the hype for Doomsday at the same time.
Coming for Avatar’s Crown
Here’s where it gets interesting. With the Encore run, Endgame has now crossed $2.8 billion worldwide. James Cameron’s Avatar still holds the record as the highest grossing movie of all time at about $2.92 billion, which puts Endgame roughly $120 million behind.
Endgame actually passed Avatar back in 2019, before an Avatar rerelease took the crown back in 2021. Now the Avengers are making another run at it. If Encore keeps pulling numbers like this over the next few weeks, the all time record could be back in play.
The Bottom Line
We thought this rerelease was going to flop. We were wrong. Seven years later, Endgame is still the biggest event in movies, and Marvel just proved people will pay to see the Avengers assemble one more time. If this is what the Doomsday hype looks like in September, December is going to be crazy.