Marvel India timed a fresh Instagram post to the exact hour advance bookings opened for Avengers Endgame: Encore, and the pitch is straightforward: come watch Thanos lose again, except this time the print carries four extra minutes that lead straight into Avengers: Doomsday.

The re-release hits Indian screens on September 25 in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, and Marvel is throwing the full format menu at it. IMAX, the studio's own Infinity Vision certification, 4DX, MX4D, Screen X, Dolby Vision, HDR Barco and ICE are all on the list, per Koimoi's report. Infinity Vision screens, for anyone who hasn't tracked that branding, are Marvel's push for bigger images and cleaner sound on certified auditoriums, not a new format so much as a quality seal.

Why now

The timing isn't random. Doomsday lands December 18, and Filmfare pointed to the box office run of Spider-Man: Brand New Day as the spark behind the renewed appetite, the film having crossed $2 billion worldwide within roughly a month, good enough for third on the all-time chart. That kind of number tends to put a shine back on everything adjacent to the MCU, and Marvel clearly wants Endgame's re-release riding that wave rather than standing alone.

The original Endgame closed out Phase 3's 22-film run back in 2019, the mega-battle against Thanos serving as the send-off before Spider-Man: No Way Home tied things up properly later that year. Seven years on, Encore isn't just nostalgia bait. Those extra four minutes function as connective tissue into a film with a genuinely strange hook: Robert Downey Jr. Is back, not as Tony Stark, but as Doctor Doom.

That reveal came at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2024 and it's still the biggest swing in this whole rollout, an actor returning to play the villain in the same universe where his hero died. Doomsday's expanded roster reads like a crossover fever dream at this point. Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Simu Liu's Shang-Chi, David Harbour's Red Guardian, Patrick Stewart back as Professor X, Ian McKellen returning as Magneto, and Channing Tatum finally getting his Gambit on screen after years of that project sitting in development limbo.

Whether Indian audiences turn out for a seven-year-old film in numbers that matter is the actual test here. Endgame did enormous business domestically in 2019, but re-releases are a different animal, and this one is competing for the same September weekends as fresh theatrical product. Marvel's bet is that the Doomsday preview footage is enough of a draw on its own, quite apart from anyone's nostalgia for the Time Heist.

Bookings are open now for the September 25 date. Doomsday itself follows on December 18, and that four-minute bridge is likely to be picked apart frame by frame the moment it's out.