Avengers: Endgame is $38.2m from a record built on five re-releases

Avatar's record as the highest-grossing film ever contains $180,133,121 that its original release did not earn.

Box Office Mojo keeps six lines for the film rather than one. The 2009 run took $2,743,577,587. A Special Edition in 2010 added $44,838,548. A quiet reissue in 2020 managed $1,281,204. China in March 2021 was worth $57,995,770. A 4K remaster in September 2022 brought $76,012,917. A 2025 outing sold $4,682 of tickets worldwide, which is roughly one full screening. Together they make $2,923,710,708, the figure that has topped the all-time worldwide chart since 2021.

Avengers: Endgame is $38,164,965 short of it. Last weekend it took $86,106,643.

The reissue that is actually holding the record

Take 2021 and 2022 out of Avatar's ledger and the chart inverts. On the eve of James Cameron's film returning to Chinese cinemas on 12 March 2021, it stood at $2,789,697,339. Endgame stood at $2,799,439,100. Endgame was ahead by $9,741,761, which at that scale is a rounding error. But it was ahead.

The China run took $57,995,770 and handed the record back to Avatar inside a fortnight, as Deadline reported at the time. The 2022 remaster added $76,012,917 on top, and that is the cushion Avatar has been sitting on ever since.

Those two re-releases are worth $134,008,687 between them. Avengers Endgame: Encore has taken $86,106,643 in three days, or 64% of them. Deadline had the global opening at $86m; Empire put it at $88m, which is the usual distance between a studio's Sunday estimate and Tuesday's actuals. The re-release opened on 7% of what the film did in 2019, as we wrote on Saturday.

By the standards of reissues it is still a large number. Deadline ranks the $26,106,643 domestic start third among re-releases, behind the 1997 reissue of Star Wars at $35.9m and The Lion King 3D at $30.2m in 2011. Neither of those was chasing anything. Both were simply old films people wanted to see again, which is not what Disney has built here.

What the top of the chart has been measuring

The all-time record last changed hands because of a film in ordinary first release on 25 January 2010, when Avatar passed Titanic on its 41st day out.

Everything after that has been a reissue. Disney put Endgame back into cinemas on 28 June 2019 with six minutes of extra material, an unfinished Hulk scene and a Stan Lee tribute among it; CNBC reported at the time that the stated purpose was to top Avatar. It worked on 21 July 2019. Avatar took the record back in March 2021 with China, then extended it in September 2022 with the remaster. Encore arrived on 25 September 2026 carrying four new end-credits scenes with Robert Downey Jr's Doctor Doom, Tom Hiddleston's Loki and Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner, per Variety, all of it pointing at Avengers: Doomsday.

Four changes of position in seven years, every one of them decided by a release date rather than by a film finding an audience.

Both of them belong to Disney

This is the part the record coverage keeps leaving out. Disney completed its purchase of 21st Century Fox on 20 March 2019, five weeks before Endgame opened. Since then, the two films at the top of the chart have had the same owner, and every reissue that moved either of them was that owner picking a date.

That does not make the money fake. People bought the tickets, in China in 2021 and in 12 markets last weekend. It does mean the all-time box office record has worked for seven years as a scheduling decision, and it will keep working that way for as long as first and second place sit inside the same company. Disney can break its own record whenever it has a sequel to advertise, which is what Encore is: a trailer for Doomsday that audiences pay to watch.

The lead is entirely overseas

At home the argument finished years ago. Endgame has taken $884,479,643 in North America across its two releases. Avatar has taken $785,221,649 across all six of its, a total Box Office Mojo and The Numbers agree on to the dollar. Endgame is $99,257,994 ahead domestically, and has been since 2019.

That puts Avatar's true lead at $137,422,959, every cent of it international, and $57,995,770 of it earned in the fortnight the film spent back in Chinese cinemas in March 2021. Subtract the American advantage from the overseas one and you are left with $38,164,965. That is the whole record.

When it crosses

$38,164,965 is 44% of what Encore made on its opening weekend. Re-releases normally fall harder than that in their second frame. A 60% drop this coming weekend would give about $34.4m, short on its own, but four days of midweek business at anything near the current rate covers the difference. On any ordinary curve the crossing lands between 2 and 5 October, and Disney will announce it.

One caution on the figure itself. Several outlets this week, Yahoo among them, have put the gap at $38.7m. Subtract Box Office Mojo's two lifetime totals and it is $38,164,965. The Numbers has Avatar at $2,923,706,026 rather than $2,923,710,708, because it does not count the 2025 reissue. A $4,682 disagreement will not decide anything. It is a fair indication of how much of this record is bookkeeping.

When Endgame does pass, it will have sold nowhere near as many tickets as the films above it on an inflation-adjusted chart, which is the same caveat that applied when Spider-Man: Brand New Day took the American record on a third fewer admissions than Star Wars. A dollar record measures dollars.

Avengers Endgame: Encore is booked through the first week of October. Avengers: Doomsday opens on 18 December.