Hollywood's September box office just delivered one of the most unusual weekends in recent memory: the biggest film in cinemas was not a new release, but a seven-year-old movie. Avengers: Endgame Encore, Disney and Marvel's rerelease of the 2019 blockbuster, returned to theaters over the September 25–27, 2026 weekend and powered its way to No. 1 at both the domestic and global box office, collecting an estimated $86 million worldwide.
The total — $26 million in North America and $60 million from international markets, according to studio estimates reported by Variety and TheWrap — is an extraordinary figure for a rerelease. Disney believes it is the second-biggest global opening for a rerelease in history, and it landed ahead of several brand-new films that studios had positioned as the weekend's headline attractions.
The performance also moved the needle on one of the most famous records in film history. The rerelease has lifted Avengers: Endgame's lifetime worldwide total to approximately $2.885 billion, leaving it roughly $39 million behind Avatar's $2.9 billion global haul. For the first time in years, the all-time crown is genuinely within reach.
The Numbers Behind the Encore
The $86 million weekend breaks down in ways that reveal just how broad the film's appeal remains. International audiences drove the bulk of the total: the $60 million from overseas markets was more than double the $26 million North American haul. China was the biggest international market with $13.5 million, followed by the UK and Ireland with $5.4 million, according to studio figures.
In the UK and Ireland, Endgame Encore earned £4.12 million across 537 cinemas — the biggest-ever opening weekend for a rerelease in the region, with a per-screen average of £7,678. Only the 3D rerelease of Avatar has opened bigger among archive titles there. Mexico added $4.3 million, and India contributed approximately $2.8 million (about ₹22.45 crore over three days), making it the fifth-largest market for the rerelease.
Premium formats did much of the heavy lifting. Imax screens accounted for an estimated $13.7 million of the global total — roughly 16 percent — including $4 million at home and $9.7 million overseas. In North America, premium formats represented 67 percent of the opening, a share more typical of a brand-new tentpole than a catalog reissue. On the domestic side, the film's $26 million came from 3,060 theaters, working out to roughly $8,500 per location — a strong average for a film that audiences have been able to watch at home for years.
Why a Seven-Year-Old Film Topped the Box Office
This was not a routine repertory run. The Encore edition of Endgame arrives with four minutes of additional footage, a new post-credits scene, and an exclusive first look at Avengers: Doomsday, which opens in December. Disney and Marvel positioned the rerelease as the opening act of the build-up to Doomsday, which is expected to bring back nearly the full Avengers roster — and which will mark Robert Downey Jr.'s return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The rerelease is also the first title to roll out under Disney's new Infinity Vision program, a premium-format certification initiative built around the lead-up to Doomsday. Combined with the new footage, it gave fans who have owned the story beat-for-beat for seven years a reason to return to the cinema rather than rewatch it at home.
Analyst David A. Gross, who publishes the box office newsletter FranchiseRe, put the result in perspective: "Re-releases rarely earn more than $10 million." Viewed that way, an $86 million weekend is not merely a good rerelease — it is a number that most original films in 2026 have not reached.
The timing was equally deliberate. Gross noted that the run functions as a marketing exercise for what Marvel has coming next, building early word-of-mouth ahead of Doomsday. If fans will turn out in these numbers for footage they have largely seen before, it is an early signal of the appetite for the December release.
Chasing Avatar's All-Time Record
The Encore weekend has reignited the race for the biggest prize in box office history. With its lifetime total now around $2.885 billion, Endgame sits approximately $39 million behind Avatar's $2.9 billion — a gap that the rerelease could plausibly close if it holds in theaters through the autumn.
The two films have traded the record before. Endgame briefly passed Avatar in 2019, only for a Chinese rerelease of Avatar in 2021 to reclaim the crown. An Encore-fueled reclamation would add another chapter to the longest-running rivalry in box office history.
Marvel Studios, meanwhile, has now hauled in $35.075 billion globally across 38 films, a franchise total no other studio series comes close to matching. The Encore result suggests the MCU's theatrical pull remains formidable even when the "new" release is seven years old.
The Rest of the Marketplace Held Its Own
What made the weekend genuinely notable — beyond the headline — was its breadth. While Endgame Encore took the top spot, the frame offered something for nearly every audience segment, and the overall domestic marketplace was up more than 60 percent compared with the same weekend last year, with 2026's domestic box office running about 19 percent ahead of 2025.
The new Resident Evil film took second place domestically with $23.3 million in its second frame — a steep 61 percent decline, but enough to make it the first installment in the franchise to cross $100 million at the domestic box office. Internationally it added $27 million for a worldwide total of $196 million, with China and Japan still to come.
Brad Pitt's Heart of the Beast opened to a solid $20 million domestically and $50.1 million worldwide. A24's Primetime posted one of the distributor's best opening weekends ever with $19.1 million, and DreamWorks Animation's Forgotten Island opened to a softer $13 million.
The variety — a superhero rerelease, a horror sequel, a star-driven drama, a dark A24 satire, and an animated family film — is exactly the kind of diversified slate that keeps theaters healthy. Cinemas cannot survive on a single blockbuster at a time; weekends like this one are the argument for a full, varied release calendar.
What It Means for Avengers: Doomsday
The Encore weekend is best understood as a stress test for December. Marvel essentially asked the question: how much demand exists for the Avengers on the big screen right now? The answer — $86 million for a film everyone has already seen — suggests the appetite for Doomsday is enormous.
There are caveats. A rerelease audience is self-selecting: the most enthusiastic fans show up first, and the per-screen numbers will inevitably fall in the coming weeks. The Encore edition will not match the original's $1.2 billion opening weekend. But as a signal, it could hardly be clearer. As one analyst noted after the numbers landed, it is not every weekend that a film from 2019 returns to No. 1.
For the industry, the lesson is broader. The rerelease market has quietly become a real business — from Titanic 3D to the Star Wars special editions, catalog titles have periodically delivered serious grosses. Endgame Encore has now set the modern benchmark, and every studio with a beloved library will be watching what happens next. If the film closes the $39 million gap and reclaims the all-time record, December's Doomsday will arrive with the MCU holding every meaningful box office crown at once.
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