Over the weekend of September 25–27, four movies each cleared $20 million at the North American box office, and the one that came out on top wasn’t new. “Avengers: Endgame” — the 2019 Marvel Studios epic that already holds box office records’ worth of superlatives — returned to theaters as “Avengers: Endgame: Encore” and pulled in more than $24 million, edging out three genuine new releases in the same three days. It’s a strange thing to watch a seven-year-old film out-earn brand-new competition, but it wasn’t an accident. Marvel timed the re-release deliberately, and the numbers suggest the bet paid off.
A Weekend Built Around a Seven-Year-Old Movie
“Endgame: Encore” began its theatrical run on September 25 and immediately became the weekend’s top earner, pushing the film’s cumulative domestic total to somewhere near $900 million — a figure that already included its original 2019 release and a handful of prior anniversary re-issues. For a film most of its audience has already seen, sometimes more than once, that’s a remarkable showing against a slate of films built specifically to win the weekend.
The re-release wasn’t just a nostalgia play. Marvel packaged the Encore run with an exclusive first look at “Avengers: Doomsday,” the studio’s next ensemble tentpole, due in theaters December 18. Audiences who caught the film in IMAX or on Infinity Vision-certified screens got an additional bonus: a longer, format-exclusive sneak peek not shown elsewhere. Director Anthony Russo has said the Encore presentation was built to connect directly into how “Doomsday” opens, turning what could have been a straightforward re-issue into a marketing bridge between two eras of the franchise.
Why Marvel Brought Endgame Back Now
The timing is not subtle. With “Avengers: Doomsday” three months out — and carrying the added intrigue of Robert Downey Jr. returning to the franchise in the role of Doctor Doom — Marvel has every incentive to keep the Avengers name in front of moviegoers through the fall. Re-releasing the film that closed out the Infinity Saga, complete with new footage attached, is a low-cost way to do that: the production costs were paid off years ago, marketing can lean entirely on nostalgia and curiosity about “Doomsday,” and every ticket sold effectively doubles as a trailer screening for the December release.
It also reframes what “winning the weekend” means in 2026. A studio re-release competing directly with, and beating, three original films says as much about the current state of counter-programming in theaters as it does about “Endgame” itself.
Three New Movies, All Fighting Over the Same $20 Million
Right behind “Endgame: Encore,” the weekend turned into a genuine three-way scrum. Paramount’s “Heart of the Beast,” directed by David Ayer, opened to roughly $20 million. The survival thriller stars Brad Pitt as a Special Forces officer named James Belmont who’s stranded in the Alaskan wilderness after a plane crash, alongside his retired combat dog, Odin (played by the dog actor Uber), with J.K. Simmons and Anna Lambe rounding out the cast. Reviews have landed on the positive side of average — solid enough for a studio action picture, if not a breakout.
Nearly matching it was A24’s “Primetime,” also around $20 million in its opening weekend. It’s a bigger swing than the box office number suggests: the film, from director Lance Oppenheim in his narrative feature debut, dramatizes the 2006 origins of the television program “To Catch a Predator,” with Robert Pattinson playing host Chris Hansen. The cast also includes Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Anna Faris, Bokeem Woodbine, and Phoebe Bridgers, with a screenplay by Ajon Singh. Critical reaction has been mixed to positive, with several reviewers singling out Pattinson’s performance as the film’s strongest element.
DreamWorks Animation’s “Forgotten Island,” directed by Joel Crawford and featuring the voices of H.E.R. and Dave Franco, opened more modestly, in the $10–13 million range. Notably, it’s a rare non-franchise animated release built around an original story about friendship, memory, and loss rather than an established property — a tougher sell in an animation marketplace dominated by sequels, but one DreamWorks appears willing to make room for.
A Storm, a Fading Reboot, and What It All Signals
Complicating everyone’s numbers was the weather: a nor’easter moved through several of the country’s most densely populated moviegoing markets over the weekend, likely trimming ticket sales across the board rather than favoring any one release. Meanwhile, the horror reboot of “Resident Evil” — which broke a 16-year box office record just a week earlier — settled into its second weekend at around $22 million, a steep 74% drop from its $60 million debut. That kind of front-loaded fall suggests the franchise revival, while a genuine opening-weekend success story, may not have the word-of-mouth legs to sustain a long theatrical run.
Taken together, the weekend is a useful snapshot of where theatrical exhibition stands heading into the fourth quarter of 2026: a legacy franchise re-release can still out-muscle new original and mid-budget films when it’s tied to genuine anticipation for what comes next, while newer titles — even ones with recognizable stars like Pitt and Pattinson — are left splitting a shrinking pool of opening-weekend moviegoers.
The Doomsday Countdown Begins
For Marvel, none of this weekend’s box office chatter is really about “Endgame.” It’s about December 18. With “Avengers: Doomsday” now less than three months away and Robert Downey Jr.’s turn as Doctor Doom becoming one of the most talked-about casting swerves in recent Marvel history, the Encore run functions as an extended teaser campaign disguised as a nostalgia trip. If ticket buyers keep showing up for a movie they’ve already seen, largely to catch a glimpse of the one they haven’t, Marvel will have gotten exactly what it wanted out of this weekend — regardless of where “Endgame: Encore” technically ranks in the record books.