Marvel’s re-release of Avengers: Endgame, with about four minutes of new footage, opened at No. 1 in North America with $26.1 million. It then fell 83 percent in its second weekend, but the run has lifted the film’s lifetime totals ahead of December’s Avengers: Doomsday.

Seven years after it first played in cinemas, Avengers: Endgame went back to No. 1. The re-release, titled Avengers Endgame: Encore, opened on September 25 and took $26,106,643 in North America over its first weekend, according to The Numbers.

It played in 3,060 theaters, for an average of $8,532 each, and beat every new release that weekend.

What Is New

The new version adds about four minutes of footage, NBC’s Today reported. It was released in standard, IMAX and a format called Infinity Vision, and audiences on IMAX and Infinity Vision screens were shown a sneak peek of the next film in the series.

That film, Avengers: Doomsday, opens on December 18. Robert Downey Jr., who played Iron Man, returns in it as the villain Doctor Doom.

Directors Anthony and Joe Russo called the re-release “required viewing”. “There’s a natural progression from ‘Endgame’ into ‘Doomsday’,” Joe Russo told Today.

“If you saw ‘Endgame’ when it was originally released, you couldn’t see this coming,” Anthony Russo said of the added scenes.

A Steep Second Weekend

The audience came early. In its second weekend, October 2–4, the re-release fell 83 percent to $4,471,524 from 3,000 theaters, dropping to seventh place.

The Lifetime Totals

The re-release is counted together with the film’s original run. As of October 7, The Numbers puts Endgame’s lifetime North American total at $895,854,127, the third highest of all time.

Its worldwide total stands at $2,926,850,376. On The Numbers’ all-time worldwide chart that places it first, about $3.1 million ahead of Avatar, which is listed at $2,923,706,026.

The original film was released on April 26, 2019, runs 181 minutes and had a production budget that The Numbers lists at $400 million.

Image: Robert Downey Jr. at San Diego Comic-Con, 2014. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.