Marvel's decision to send Avengers: Endgame back to Indian theatres is paying off before the film has even opened. Koimoi reports the re-release, titled Encore, has sold 45,000 tickets in just five days of advance booking, with ten more days to go before its September 25 release.

That's a striking number for a film audiences have already seen, some of them multiple times since 2019. But this isn't quite the same cut. Encore carries a couple of extra minutes of footage and a fresh post-credits scene built to set up Avengers: Doomsday, which lands in December. For a fan base this invested, two minutes of new Marvel timeline is apparently worth a ticket.

Advance sales opened on September 10, a full fortnight before release, and the pace has reportedly stayed ahead of what several new films are managing in the same window. More screens are expected to come online as the date nears, which should push numbers up further.

The Baahubali Question

The real conversation in trade circles right now is whether Encore can dent India's re-release record books. That bar currently belongs to Baahubali: The Epic, the combined cut of both Baahubali films, which opened to around 9 crore on its first day back in theatres. Pawan Kalyan's Gabbar Singh sits at number two with roughly 5 crore, and a trio of Ghilli, Murari and Sanam Teri Kasam cluster around the 4 crore mark on their re-release debuts.

Going purely by how the advance is trending, Koimoi's report suggests Endgame should clear the Ghilli-Murari-Sanam Teri Kasam bracket without much trouble, and possibly Gabbar Singh too. Getting past Baahubali is a different ask altogether. That would require Encore to open in double digits on Day 1, something no re-release has managed in India yet.

Marvel has reason to feel good about its odds. Spider-Man: Brand New Day just had a strong run in Indian cinemas, and anticipation for Doomsday is building fast. India also gets Marvel's tentpoles a day ahead of the rest of the world, which has historically translated into some of the loudest opening-day energy anywhere for these films.

Whether Encore actually breaks the record or simply lands comfortably in the top three, it will say something about how much pull an older Marvel title still has when it's dressed up as a bridge to the next big crossover. The next ten days of booking data should make that a lot clearer, and September 25 will settle the rest.