Box Office: Endgame Encore’s $86M Exposes Hollywood’s Problem

Hollywood keeps telling audiences that new ideas matter. Then a seven-year-old superhero movie comes back to theaters, adds a few scenes, and takes the No. 1 spot anyway. Avengers: Endgame returned to theaters as Avengers: Endgame: Encore and earned $26 million in North America over the weekend. It added $60 million overseas for an $86 million global launch. The rerelease includes new post-credit scenes tied to Avengers: Doomsday. It beat three major new releases and last weekend’s winner, Resident Evil. That result should get Hollywood’s attention. Audiences showed up for an event. Disney and Marvel gave fans a reason to return to a movie they could already watch at home, and theaters became the place to share that experience again. Avengers: Endgame was already a giant when it opened in 2019, earning roughly $2.8 billion worldwide. The new run now places it among the biggest rerelease openings in domestic box office history. Only the 1997 rerelease of Star Wars: A New Hope and the 2011 return of The Lion King opened higher in North America. The lesson isn’t that every studio should drag an old hit back into theaters and expect easy money. Nostalgia alone doesn’t sell tickets. Fan...