In 2019, Marvel re-released ‘Avengers: Endgame’ with unreleased footage to take the title of highest-grossing film in history from ‘Avatar’. The crown lasted a year and a half. In 2026 the maneuver is activated again, this time linked to ‘Avengers: Doomsday’. It is the jewel in the crown of the Marvel team and Disney is not going to stop squeezing it.
The return Marvel has confirmed that ‘Avengers: Endgame’ returns to theaters on September 25, 2026 under the title ‘Avengers Endgame Encore’. The new version includes a special introduction, additional scenes and a final scene that, for now, will only be seen in IMAX and Infinity Vision screenings, the premium screen system that Disney presented a few months ago. ‘Endgame’ continues to be the ceiling that Marvel Studios has not touched again, neither at the box office nor in the feeling of collective event that surrounded it, and that spirit is what the studio wants to evoke for ‘Avengers: Doomsday’.
What’s new? Joe Russo has confirmed that the scenes filmed for this re-release are set in ‘Doomsday’, and describes them as a fundamental piece to build a bridge to the new film. Marvel already used this re-release formula, almost identical, with ‘Endgame’ itself: in June 2019, just two months after its premiere, the film would return to theaters with seven minutes of extra footage and an explicit objective: to surpass ‘Avatar’ at the box office before the premiere of ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’.
That maneuver worked. On July 20, 2019, during the Marvel panel at San Diego Comic-Con, the studio confirmed that ‘Endgame’ had surpassed the $2.789 million accumulated by ‘Avatar’ until then, thus becoming the highest-grossing film in history. The celebration was short-lived: in March 2021, ‘Avatar’ was released again in China and regained the title in a single weekend. Since then, the distance between both films has not stopped growing: today ‘Avengers: Endgame’ accumulates 2,799 million dollars compared to 2,923 million for ‘Avatar’. There is almost 124 million difference, much more than what separated both films in 2019.
Fall without Avengers. The collections of the ‘Endgame’ films have suffered a constant decline. Let’s remember some cases: ‘Eternals’ raised 402 million dollars with a budget of between 200 and 250 million. ‘Black Widow’ stood at 379 million, weighed down by its simultaneous premiere on Disney+. ‘Quantumania’ suffered the worst second weekend drop in Marvel Studios history. ‘The Marvels’ closed that streak without achieving the financial success that the studio expected.
The real goal of ‘Avengers Endgame Encore’ is no longer to recover a record that today seems unattainable, but to rebuild the feeling of an event that Marvel lost years ago: to remind the public, just before December and the premiere of ‘Doomsday’, why they cared about this story.
What is played in December. ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ hits theaters on December 18, 2026, the same day as ‘Dune: Part Three’, a coincidence that already has generated friction for the distribution of IMAX screens. Ticket sales for Infinity Vision screenings of ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ start right now, on July 20. Five days later, at San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel will show the first official trailer for the film. Depending on how both events are received, we will see if Marvel is in a position to bottle again that seemingly unrepeatable lightning bolt that was ‘Endgame’
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