Avengers: Endgame Encore dusted off an estimated $86 million at the box office as new scenes helped bring Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) fans back to theaters to prep for Doomsday.
It’s a gargantuan opening weekend for Disney and Marvel’s Infinity Saga-ending re-release that saw it rank atop global charts. Of its $86 million debut, it earned $26 million domestically and $60 million internationally.
For those unaware of why Avengers: Endgame is back in theaters, there are a few reasons audiences have shown up in droves to watch the seven-year-old MCU movie. First and foremost, the Encore re-release comes with a few minutes of extra footage that ties directly into this December’s superhero crossover event film, Avengers: Doomsday. With director Joe Russo previously setting up the new clips as “critical” to the next movie’s plot, it seemed inevitable that at least die-hard fans would show up.
There’s been plenty of debate about whether those new precious minutes of MCU footage could justify the price of another ticket, but with another $86 million in the bank, it seems there were plenty who thought it was enough. It helped that, outside of one scene, most of Avengers: Endgame Encore keeps the original story intact, giving moviegoers a chance to relive all of the hype moments and big reveals before Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, and more return to the MCU later this year.
As Avengers: Endgame Encore brings the end of Thanos’ mission to conquer the universe with the Infinity Stones back to theaters, it also sees the return of one of the biggest theatrical releases of all time. The Avengers movie shattered records upon its release in 2019 and eventually returned later that same year for its first re-release. Many of its notable feats have held up in the seven years since, with only Tom Holland’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day able to topple some of them last month.
Through it all, Avengers: Endgame has now soared to an unbelievable $2.885 billion worldwide total. Disney has marked it as the second-highest debut for a re-release ever, falling only behind 2012’s Titanic 3D.
While Marvel and Disney take what feels like an endless run of victory laps, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil proved it has some staying power after its second weekend in theaters. It brought in another $23 million domestically and $27 million internationally for a worldwide, with its two-weekend total sitting at $196.5 million on a reported $75 million budget. Despite facing an uphill battle with some fans, the Capcom video game-turned-horror-movie quickly became the highest-rated game adaptation of all time.
Also opening at the box office this weekend was the Brad Pitt-led and doggy-driven survival flick, Heart of the Beast, which brought $50.1 million globally and fetched an 8/10 review from IGN. Director Lance Oppenheim and star Robert Pattinson’s Primetime, a big biopic based on Chris Hansen’s To Catch a Predator that IGN awarded a 9/10, earned $20.06 million globally, with the vast majority of that ($19.2 million) brought in domestically.
The top five films for the global box office from this past weekend saw Avengers: Endgame Encore take first, Resident Evil take second, and Heart of the Beast take third. Primetime and Forgotten Island rounded out the list in fourth and fifth, respectively.
Avengers: Endgame Encore is mostly the same movie we saw in 2019, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t spawned plenty to talk about as Doomsday approaches. One topic on fans’ minds involves a new star-studded, pre-movie opener that asks fans to silence their phones.
Michael Cripe
Freelance Writer
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
