Is Avengers: Endgame the Highest-Grossing Movie Ever Again? Yes, by $1.8 Million, and I Think the Record Deserves an Asterisk

I'll be honest: I didn't think this was going to work. When Disney said Avengers: Endgame was heading back to theaters in late September with a tweaked ending and a few extra scenes, I filed it under "marketing for Avengers: Doomsday" and moved on. A movie you can stream at home, in a theater again, seven years later? Then the first weekend came in at $86 million worldwide, and the second one quietly finished the job. By the weekend of Oct. 2-4, reports citing Disney and Box Office Mojo put Endgame's worldwide total at $2.9255 billion and Avatar's at $2.9237 billion.

That is a lead of about $1.8 million on a total of nearly three billion dollars. I keep coming back to that number, because it's both the headline and the reason I think the headline needs a footnote. Below is the whole story as I understand it: how the record has bounced between the same two movies, what Encore actually did, a little math I did myself to make the margin feel real, and where I land on whether this record is as big a deal as it sounds.

The record clock: five moments the crown changed hands

The "biggest movie ever" title has behaved less like a throne and more like a ball passed back and forth between two Disney-owned films. Here's the sequence, in order.

1. Dec. 2009Avatar takes the crown and keeps it for about a decade

   James Cameron's film opened in December 2009 and held the worldwide record for roughly ten years.

2. July 21, 2019Endgame passes it on day 89

   Endgame crossed about $2.79 billion, edging Avatar's roughly $2.789 billion. Marvel's Kevin Feige announced it at Comic-Con, thanked Cameron for holding the record so long, and said himself that inflation made the comparison imperfect.

3. March 2021Avatar takes it back

   A rerelease in China pushed Avatar back to No. 1. Further reissues kept adding to its total, which is why the record Endgame just beat includes more than Avatar's original run.

4. Sept. 25, 2026Endgame Encore opens

   The rerelease, which adds new material tied to Doomsday, made about $86 million worldwide in its first weekend, the second-biggest worldwide rerelease opening on record, behind only the 2012 3D rerelease of Titanic. Even so, Endgame was still about $39 million short of Avatar.

5. Oct. 2-4, 2026Endgame retakes the record

   Encore's second weekend added roughly $4.4 million domestically (down about 81%) and $14.4 million overseas. With about $126 million added in total, Endgame crossed $2.9255 billion, just past Avatar's $2.9237 billion.

The scoreboard, side by side

One thing I rarely see mentioned: both films now live under the same corporate roof. Disney owns Marvel and, since its Fox deal, Avatar too. Whichever film is on top, Disney is the one collecting the trophy, which makes the whole rivalry feel a little like a company racing itself.

Three ways to feel a $1.8 million lead

Big totals make it hard to feel small margins. So I ran a few numbers of my own, using the figures above.

My own arithmetic from the reported figures. As a rough illustration only: at an assumed average ticket price of $10, $1.8 million is about 180,000 tickets. Real ticket prices vary a lot by country, so treat that as a feel-for-the-size number, not a count.

Look at that third tile again, because it's where I think the real story is. Encore didn't win this on American multiplexes. Deadline reported that it was the top non-local film in China, and that it became the highest-grossing rerelease in Latin America, with about $6.1 million in Mexico and $3.1 million in Brazil. India added roughly $3.8 million. A story that gets told as "Marvel beat Avatar" was really decided in markets where the Avengers are still a big deal on a big screen.

Where the all-time top five stands right now

Here is how the top of the unadjusted worldwide chart looks as of the most recent figures I could find. Totals are rounded and come from the sources listed at the bottom.

That last observation is my favorite thing on this page. Whatever happens to the No. 1 spot, one director is behind three of the five biggest movies in history, and a rerelease of a 2009 film is the reason the chart's top two are so close.

My take: it's a real record, and it still deserves an asterisk

I don't want to be a killjoy here. A movie that came out in 2019 earning another $126 million in 2026 is a great story, and I mean that. It tells me people still want to watch big movies together, on a big screen, even ones they already know by heart. That makes me hopeful about what theaters can still do when a studio gives people a real reason to come back.

But I think the asterisk is real, for three reasons.

First, it's unadjusted. When Endgame first took the title in 2019, even Feige pointed out that ticket prices change over time. Most inflation-adjusted lists still put Gone with the Wind at No. 1, with Avatar usually close behind it. The estimates vary a lot depending on the method (I've seen several different figures), so I won't hand you one. The takeaway is simple: "highest-grossing" and "most-watched" are not the same thing.

Second, both champions are partly reissue-powered. Avatar's total includes rereleases, and Endgame's comeback came from one. When a record can flip because a studio chooses to put an old movie back in theaters, it says as much about release calendars as about the movie. That doesn't make the number fake. It makes it a record about distribution as much as storytelling.

Third, the margin is almost nothing. With the gap this thin, I wouldn't be surprised to see the crown mentioned again in coverage soon. The reporting I read noted that another Avatar rerelease could change the order, and I didn't find an announced one in the coverage I reviewed. So today's headline is accurate, but it's a snapshot.

On Avengers: Doomsday, the next film on the calendar for Dec. 18, reported presales were close to $60 million according to TheWrap's theatrical sources, with about 70% coming through the Infinity Vision push. My personal view is that I'd rather see the record earned by a new movie than inherited from an old one. Doomsday would need to out-earn everything on this chart by itself to do it, and that's a very high bar. Whether it clears it is exactly what I'm curious about, and I'd be curious even if the record weren't on the line.

Quick answers to what people keep asking

One last note on the numbers: studios and trackers round and update figures at different times, which is why you'll see $2.925 billion in some stories and $2.9255 billion in others. They describe the same result.