Avengers Endgame: Encore is tracking to open to $25 million to $28 million at the domestic box office this weekend, a number that could put a seven-year-old Marvel film back at No. 1. The re-release opens Friday, September 25, with some previews on Thursday, September 24. It opened in South Korea on September 23 and reaches India the same day as the United States.
Its main competition is Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil reboot, which topped last weekend with a franchise-best $61 million debut and is projected to take $24 million to $26 million in its second weekend. That puts the two films within a few million dollars of each other heading into Friday.
$3 Million In Thursday Previews
The early numbers are in. Deadline reports that Encore earned more than $3 million from Thursday previews, which began at 2 p.m. Deadline puts the weekend at $25 million to $30 million for Encore and $21 million to $24 million for Resident Evil, and one distribution source told the outlet it could be a three-way fight for No. 1 with Primetime, whose own previews were chasing Encore’s at $2 million to $3 million.
With four wide releases aimed at different audiences, Deadline says this could be the best late September weekend at the box office since 2018.
Three New Films Fight For Third
Three new wide releases are expected to land behind the top two. Paramount’s Brad Pitt survival adventure The Heart of the Beast and A24’s Primetime, with Robert Pattinson as Dateline’s Chris Hansen, are each projected at $17 million to $20 million. Universal and DreamWorks Animation’s Forgotten Island is tracking at $15 million to $17 million.
All three newcomers have strong reviews, which leaves room for any of them to beat projections. Primetime cost just $15 million to make, while The Heart of the Beast carries an $82 million budget and Forgotten Island cost $80 million.
Why Endgame Is Back
Disney is returning Endgame to theaters as the lead-in to Avengers: Doomsday, which opens December 18. Encore runs three hours and five minutes and adds new footage, and the ticket you buy decides how much of it you see.
What The New Scenes Add
Light spoilers ahead. Variety reports that Encore adds four new scenes totaling about four minutes, all shot during Doomsday’s production to bridge the two films. Tom Hiddleston’s Loki appears in his Time Variance Authority uniform, the TVA team spots a multiverse-wide collapse beginning, and Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner and Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom both turn up in the credits.
The Encore trailer drew 77 million views in its first 24 hours, and Marvel has kept promoting the release with new featurettes, including one this week in which casting director Sarah Halley Finn looks back on matching actors to the heroes they would play across the saga.
A $25 million to $28 million weekend would be a strong result for a re-release. Endgame opened to $357.1 million domestically in April 2019, a record at the time, and went on to become one of the highest-grossing films ever worldwide. Encore arrives as the franchise builds toward Doomsday and, after it, Avengers: Secret Wars.
Encore is playing in theaters across the United States and in international markets, though not everywhere. VOX Cinemas canceled its release in Kuwait this week and began refunding online bookings without giving a reason.
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