Theme Park Scope

Avengers: Endgame Encore won the weekend box office with $26 million domestic and $86 million worldwide…

…proving a seven-year-old movie you can stream in your pajamas can still outmuscle everything new in theaters.

I’ll admit I raised an eyebrow when Marvel announced a re-release of a film that’s been sitting on Disney+ for years. Then Thursday night happened, and I got to eat my words (and, fittingly, some popcorn).

It started with the previews. Encore pulled in $3.8 million from Thursday night screenings, ahead of every new release trying to steal the weekend, including A24’s Primetime at around $2.7 million, Brad Pitt’s Heart of the Beast at $2 million, and DreamWorks’ Forgotten Island at about $1.5 million. That was a strong signal, but what came next was even better. By Sunday, Encore had earned $26 million from 3,060 North American theaters and another $60 million overseas, for an $86 million global opening. That landed squarely inside the $25 million to $28 million range analysts had projected going in.

Those numbers put Encore in rare company. Domestically, it’s the third-biggest opening ever for a re-release, behind only the 1997 Star Wars special edition at $35.9 million and the 2011 3D re-release of The Lion King at $30.2 million, and it edged past last year’s Revenge of the Sith anniversary re-release. It fell short of the $30.2 million mark that would have set a new record, but Disney estimates it as the second-highest global debut ever for a re-release, with Titanic 3D’s 2012 overseas opening as the only bigger foreign start. IMAX screens alone delivered $13.7 million of the weekend total, about $4 million domestically and $9.7 million abroad.

What makes this different from a typical anniversary re-release is what’s tacked on the end. Encore adds roughly four minutes of new footage, including post-credit sequences that tease Avengers: Doomsday, which opens December 18 with Robert Downey Jr. playing Victor von Doom. The film also has a new color balance. Anthony Russo, who directed with his brother Joe, has said the team deliberately left the original movie alone and only added a small amount of new material, and audiences seem to be happy with that approach: Encore holds a 96% Verified Moviegoer rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The bigger story might be what this does for the all-time box office race. Endgame now sits at roughly $2.88 billion worldwide, only about $39 million behind Avatar‘s record of around $2.92 billion. Before this weekend, that gap was $124 million. Deadline reports Disney is in wait-and-see mode on whether Endgame can reclaim the top spot before Doomsday arrives, and since Encore isn’t on a one-week limited run, it has room to keep climbing through the fall. The weekend also pushed Marvel Studios past $35 billion in worldwide box office across its 38 films.

For context on the competition, Resident Evil took second place in its second weekend with $23.3 million, bringing its domestic total to $103.4 million after ten days. Heart of the Beast opened to $20 million, Primetime debuted at $19.1 million, and Forgotten Island rounded out the top five with $12.8 million.

If you skipped Encore in theaters because you figured you’d seen it already, this weekend suggests plenty of people felt the opposite, and there’s a decent chance the film keeps working its way up the record books over the coming weeks.

We’ll keep tracking Endgame Encore’s run and the road to Doomsday, so check back with Theme Park Scope for updates, and follow us on social so you don’t miss it.

Did YOU catch Endgame Encore in theaters this weekend, and were the extra scenes worth the trip?