Which Zoe Saldana movie will end the summer as #1: Avengers: Endgame or Avatar?
I know some of you don't care. Feel free to move along. I personally won't be profiting from whatever happens, but I do find the Endgame vs. Avatar box office battle interesting -- and not just because I already went on the record as saying yes, Avengers: Endgame will still beat Avatar ... eventually. That eventually may indeed come by the end of the summer.
Avengers: Endgame is getting its own little re-release in theaters this Friday, June 28, even though it's hard to see it as a re-release when it's still playing in theaters. It just picked up another $1,895,000 at the domestic box office over June 21-23. That put it at #13 on the box office chart, so it's slipping down but not completely out.
We're looking at total worldwide grosses when it comes to topping Avatar's total number. On the domestic side, Avengers: Endgame already passed Avatar but it has no shot of beating the $936.6M domestic champ Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As of the afternoon of Sunday, June 23 -- when foreign numbers from the weekend might not be in for Endgame, but they wouldn't be that huge anymore anyway -- here are the stats, per Box Office Mojo:
AVENGERS: ENDGAMEDomestic: $834,503,966Foreign: $1,915,100,000Worldwide: $2,749,603,966AVATARDomestic: $760,507,625Foreign: $2,027,457,462Worldwide: $2,787,965,087
So, as of those numbers, Avengers: Endgame needs $38,361,121 to pass Avatar's total. That number should slowly drip-drip-drip down during the week as we approach re-release Friday, since Avengers 4 is still playing in plenty of theaters.
I don't want to fight again about adjusting for inflation. There are plenty of places for those arguments, and we've already talked about how Endgame is showing how impressive Avatar's 2009 run was. Nothing can take that away from James Cameron's film.
Avengers: Endgame is supposedly getting this re-release as a push tied to Spider-Man: Far From Home, since that movie is directly tied to the end of Endgame (which is now getting Tom Holland in trouble). Neither film really needs help making money, but Captain Marvel got a nice bump at the box office when Endgame came out, and Marvel Studios seems to be doing the same thing again with this pair of films.
Plus, it can help Avengers: Endgame defeat Avatar.
Avengers: Endgame's re-release isn't an extended cut or anything, but it will have a deleted scene at the end, plus a little tribute, and "some surprises," per Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige.
Avatar was released in December 2009, but it got itself an extended theatrical re-release in summer 2010, in 3D and IMAX 3D. That 12-week special edition re-release gave Avatar another $10.74 million from the domestic box office and $22.46 million at the international box office for a total additional bump of roughly $33.2 million. That was in 2010, so ticket prices have changed.
Still, if Avengers: Endgame can get a little bit more than that, around $38 million more from its own re-release, then it can claim the new bragging rights. No balloons would fall from the ceiling or anything, but it would be cool for modern fans to be part of that cinematic moment in history. (Until Avatar 2 comes back for the title.)
