A second weekend of Encore screenings pushed the 2019 Marvel finale narrowly past Avatar's inflated lifetime haul just as Avengers: Doomsday chatter builds toward December.
The crown has changed hands again. Avengers: Endgame is back at the top of the all-time global box office chart, nosing past Avatar by the thinnest of margins, $2.9255 billion to $2.9237 billion, according to figures reported by Variety and Deadline.
The swing came courtesy of Avengers Endgame: Encore, the theatrical re-release Disney and Marvel pushed into cinemas on September 25 to warm audiences up for Avengers: Doomsday in December. The Encore run opened with an estimated $86 million worldwide, per Just Jared. Its second weekend cooled off hard, down 81% domestically to $4.4 million, but still added $14.4 million from 52 international territories, Deadline reported, enough to tip the scales.
This is not new territory for either franchise. Avatar held the record for roughly a decade after its 2009 release. Endgame snatched it away in 2019, only for James Cameron's film to grab it back in 2021 ahead of The Way of Water. Five years on, Earth's Mightiest Heroes have reclaimed the top spot. Variety notes the two films have been trading the belt back and forth for years, and whichever one is winning this week, Disney owns both of them, having absorbed Avatar through its 2019 merger with Fox.
The numbers behind the number
Deadline's breakdown gives a sense of where Encore's money actually came from. China delivered $21.3 million, the top market for any non-local release that weekend, with Indonesia, Vietnam, Ecuador and Bolivia also showing strong turnout. Latin America has been the surprise engine of this run, Deadline says, with Mexico ($6.1 million), Brazil ($3.1 million), Colombia, Peru and Paraguay all contributing to what it calls the highest-grossing re-release in the region's history. India chipped in $3.8 million.
Domestically, Endgame's re-release run has pushed its stateside lifetime cume to $894.6 million, still only good enough for third all-time behind Spider-Man: Brand New Day ($954.4 million) and The Force Awakens ($936.6 million). Its $2.03 billion international haul, though, sits at No. 2 on the MPA's all-time list, trailing only Avatar itself.
Whether any of this matters in inflation-adjusted terms is its own argument, one that flared up in the comments under Deadline's own report, with readers pointing out that Gone with the Wind would still top any list adjusted for ticket-price inflation. Nobody at Disney is losing sleep over that math this week.
The real point of Encore was never really the record. It was seeding four new end-credits scenes tied to Avengers: Doomsday, which the Russo brothers direct and which brings Robert Downey Jr. Back into the MCU as Doctor Doom. That film opens December 18 against Dune: Part Three, in what trade reporters are already framing as this year's Barbenheimer rematch. Whether Endgame holds this record past Doomsday's own release, or whether Cameron finds another reason to send Avatar back into theatres, is the next fight worth watching.
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