Avengers: Endgame is heading back to Indian screens on September 25, and it doesn't need much of a push to make history. The film is just ₹26.78 crore short of the ₹400 crore net mark, and trade watchers reckon the re-release alone could close that gap over its opening weekend.

This isn't a straight repeat run. Endgame: Encore comes with extra footage bolted on and, more importantly, an exclusive post-credits scene that gives fans a first look at Avengers: Doomsday, due this December. That alone seems to have got the old MCU crowd moving. Advance booking opened on Thursday and sold 15,000 tickets inside the first 24 hours, per Koimoi, a number that points to real appetite rather than nostalgia-buying on a whim.

On that trajectory, trade estimates put the opening at somewhere between ₹8 and ₹10 crore net. Doesn't sound massive next to a fresh tentpole, but Endgame isn't chasing a big opening. It's chasing a finish line it already got most of the way to seven years ago. The film wrapped its original 2019 run at ₹373.22 crore net in India, a number that made it one of the biggest Hollywood releases the country has ever seen. Cross ₹400 crore now, and it joins a club that currently has exactly one member.

That member is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which got there earlier this year. If Endgame follows, it'll be the second Hollywood title in India to hit ₹400 crore net, and both, will be Marvel films. That's not a coincidence Disney will mind advertising.

The re-release also lands in the middle of what's shaping up as a genuinely strong stretch for Hollywood in Indian theatres. The Odyssey has just wrapped up as Universal's biggest film ever worldwide, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day set the template for what a well-marketed Hollywood release can still do here. Endgame slotting into that run, on the back of a five-second Doomsday tease rather than any new plot, says something about how much goodwill Marvel still has stored up with Indian audiences.

Whether Endgame actually gets there in its opening weekend or needs a week or two of holds to limp past ₹400 crore is the number worth watching once the film is actually in theatres. September 25 will tell us how much of that 15,000-ticket rush was genuine hunger and how much was early-bird excitement that fades by Friday. Either way, Avengers: Doomsday arriving in December means the MCU could have a third film in this club before the year is out, and that's the bigger number Disney is really counting.