Avatar Took the All-Time Box Office Crown Back With a Re-Release. Endgame Just Won the Weekend Running the Same Play.

On Sunday, July 21, 2019, Avengers: Endgame became the highest-grossing movie ever made, by roughly half a million dollars. It had help. On June 28, Disney put it back in theaters with a Stan Lee tribute, an unfinished Hulk scene, and a sneak peek at Spider-Man: Far From Home. The tally that weekend read $2.7902 billion for Endgame and $2.7897 billion for Avatar.

The crown lasted about 20 months. In March 2021, Avatar went back into Chinese theaters and passed Endgame again on the weekend of March 14. In September 2022, a remastered two-week run ahead of The Way of Water pushed it past $2.9 billion. James Cameron's film now sits at about $2.92 billion. Endgame finished its original run near $2.799 billion, a gap of roughly $124 million.

This weekend, Disney ran the same play in reverse. Avengers: Endgame Encore opened Friday on 3,060 screens and, on Saturday's industry estimates, won the weekend with about $26 million, ahead of four new releases carrying reviews most studios would frame. There is a funny wrinkle: Disney owns both films. It closed its purchase of 21st Century Fox, and Avatar with it, in March 2019, a month before Endgame opened. Whichever movie holds the record, the trophy stays in Burbank.

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The weekend, in numbers

Encore made $11.2 million on Friday, including $3.8 million from Thursday previews. A $26 million weekend lifts Endgame's domestic total to roughly $884 million, up from $858.4 million at the end of its 2019 run.

That is one of the biggest re-release weekends on record. The two clearly ahead of it are the 1997 Star Wars Special Edition at $35.9 million and The Lion King in 3D at $30.2 million in 2011. On current estimates, Encore lands just above Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, whose 20th anniversary run opened to $25.2 million in April 2025.

Overseas, it started earlier and bigger. It opened in South Korea on September 23 and made more than $18 million internationally on Friday alone, for about $28 million outside North America through Friday, according to trackers. China led with $7 million on its first day and $4.2 million on Saturday, and is heading for roughly $13 million to $14 million for the weekend. Mexico, the UK, Japan, and Italy each added between $1 million and $2 million on Friday.

The math on the crown

Add the estimated domestic weekend to the overseas money already banked through Friday, and Endgame has earned at least $54 million this week. That cuts Avatar's lead to about $70 million at most. Trackers expect the full overseas opening to land near $60 million, for a global weekend around $85 million. If that holds, Endgame goes into Monday roughly $40 million short of the all-time record.

The all-time worldwide top three, before Disney's official numbers arrive:

1. Avatar (2009): about $2.92 billion
2. Avengers: Endgame (2019): about $2.80 billion before this weekend, and climbing
3. Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026): about $2.48 billion, and the all-time domestic champion

Can it close the rest? Re-releases are front-loaded, because the people who care most show up on opening weekend. And Digger opens Friday with IMAX and Dolby Cinema screens of its own.

The case for Endgame is China. It has earned about $632 million there, second among Hollywood films only to Zootopia 2 at $657.8 million, and it needs roughly $26 million more to reclaim that title too. The same Chinese audience that handed Avatar the crown in 2021 now decides whether Endgame takes it back. Our read: if the optimistic projections hold, it needs a second weekend that holds up better than most re-releases do. Possible, not probable.

What Encore actually is

The runtime depends on where you see it. Standard and IMAX showings run 183 minutes, with a little over two minutes of new material. Screens certified for Infinity Vision, Disney's new premium-format label, run 186 minutes with 6 minutes and 17 seconds added. There are only 75 certified screens in the US and about 300 internationally, and each needs a screen at least 45 feet wide.

The additions include an introduction from Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans, plus new mid- and post-credits scenes that lead into Avengers: Doomsday, which opens December 18 with Downey back as Doctor Doom. Some of that footage has already leaked online, so if you care about spoilers, go soon.

The rest of a very good weekend

• Resident Evil (Sony): about $22 million to $24 million in its second weekend, down roughly 60 percent from its franchise-record $60.2 million opening, and now past $100 million domestic.
• Primetime (A24): about $20.5 million from 2,874 theaters on a reported $15 million budget. Its $8.5 million opening day is the fourth best in A24 history, behind Backrooms, Marty Supreme, and Civil War. Audiences gave it a B CinemaScore, about what you would expect for a satire this uncomfortable.
• Heart of the Beast (Paramount): about $20 million from 3,435 theaters. The Brad Pitt survival drama earned an A-minus CinemaScore and a 95 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience score, good signs for its legs, and it needs them against a budget around $80 million.
• Forgotten Island (Universal and DreamWorks): about $11.5 million from 3,548 theaters, despite some of the best reviews of the year and an A CinemaScore. That is one of the softest starts in DreamWorks Animation history, and the clearest sign that original animation still struggles to open.

Put another way: four films earned roughly $20 million or more on a late-September weekend, and the one on top is a movie most of its audience has already seen, probably more than once. If you only see one of the new ones, our weekend guide made the case for Primetime, and the opening backs it up.

Money is a scoreboard, not a ranking

Avatar has the record, and far fewer people will tell you it is their favorite movie. Endgame is a different case: the payoff to 22 films, and the one that routinely fights Infinity War for the top spot whenever fans rank the MCU. Whether it reclaims the crown in October is a question for Disney's accountants. Whether it is actually the best Avengers movie is a question for you.

If you are going back for Encore, use it to settle that. Run the Marvel movies ranked head to head on Shortlist, catch up on anything you skipped with the MCU in order, and read our Avengers: Doomsday trailer breakdown before December. Then share the list and see who agrees.

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