Box Office: ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Is No. 1 Again as Brad Pitt Edges Robert Pattinson

‘Avengers: Endgame’ wins a crowded weekend with $26 million, and three films clear $20 million.

Seven years after it rewrote the record books, Avengers: Endgame is back on top of the domestic box office. Avengers: Endgame Encore, the Marvel Studios re-release, took No. 1 with $26 million from 3,060 theaters, beating three new wide releases and last week’s champion. Add $60 million from international markets and the $86 million global weekend is the second-biggest re-release debut ever, behind only the 2012 3D re-release of Titanic.

It was a crowded weekend, and a healthy one. Three films crossed $20 million, and all five films in the top five cleared $10 million. Resident Evil held second in its second frame, Heart of the Beast edged Primetime for third, and Forgotten Island beat its Friday pace. Overall domestic grosses reached about $122.3 million, up 10.6 percent from last weekend and 58.5 percent from the same weekend last year. For a late-September corridor that studios once treated as a dumping ground, that is a lot of real business.

The Russo Brothers‘ 2019 finale is back in theaters ahead of Avengers: Doomsday, which opens December 18, and the play is exactly what it looks like: put the last film that brought the whole team together in front of audiences before the next one does it again. The Encore release includes previously unreleased footage and an exclusive look at Doomsday, and about 52 percent of the domestic weekend came from Infinity Vision screens, the new certification for premium large format theaters. The weekend pushes the Avengers: Endgame lifetime domestic total to roughly $884 million.

Worldwide, Endgame grossed $2.799 billion in its original run. It passed Avatar in July 2019 to become the highest-grossing film of all time and held the title until 2021, when James Cameron’s film reclaimed it on the strength of a re-release in China. Avatar still holds the record at roughly $2.9 billion.

Last weekend’s champion, Resident Evil, took second with $23.3 million, a drop of about 60 percent from its franchise-record opening of around $60 million. Zach Cregger‘s take on the Capcom games stars Austin Abrams as a medical courier caught in a zombie outbreak on a delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital. The film has now earned $103.4 million domestically in two weekends, plus another $27 million internationally this frame.

Paramount Pictures‘ Heart of the Beast opened third with $20 million from about 3,400 locations, plus a strong $30.1 million internationally. Directed by David Ayer, the survival adventure stars Brad Pitt as a retired veteran who, after a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness, makes a 58-mile trek to safety with his combat dog.

On paper, $20 million is a modest start for a film with a reported $82 million budget, though the overseas number softens the math. The audience response is the story here. It earned an A- CinemaScore, an 87 percent critics score and a 95 percent Rotten Tomatoes audience score, and that kind of word of mouth is how adult-skewing dramas play into November. We called it the year’s most unexpected love story in our review, and audiences appear to agree.

A24‘s Primetime led the newcomers on Friday but finished fourth with about $19.1 million from roughly 2,800 theaters, a softer Saturday and Sunday than its $8.49 million opening day suggested. The audience skewed young: about 69 percent of ticket buyers were under 30. Even so, the film has already cleared its reported $15 million production budget in three days.

Directed by Lance Oppenheim, the drama-thriller stars Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen during his run hosting To Catch a Predator on Dateline NBC, with Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo and Phoebe Bridgers in the cast. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival this month to strong reviews, with an 87 percent critics score and 82 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The CinemaScore is a softer B, which may explain the front-loaded weekend.

The real Hansen is not a fan. After seeing the film, he called it “so bizarre and so in-and-out of reality” and “detached from reality.” If anything, the public argument has kept the film in the conversation all week.

Forgotten Island rounded out the top five with $12.8 million, beating its Friday tracking of about $11.5 million but still a slow start for an $80 million original. The good news is in the reviews: an A CinemaScore and a 94 percent Rotten Tomatoes critics score. Universal Pictures and DreamWorks Animation’s original is co-directed by Joel Crawford, who directed Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Januel Mercado. The film follows two friends pulled through a portal to Nakali, a magical island drawn from the stories of their Filipino families, who learn that the price of getting home is every memory of their friendship. H.E.R., Liza Soberano, Dave Franco, Lea Salonga and Jenny Slate lead the voice cast. The Saturday and Sunday lift is exactly what family films need, and with no major family release until early November, Forgotten Island has room to grow.

In specialty, Bassam Tariq’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, starring Mahershala Ali as a religious hitman grieving his wife, opened to $900,000 from six theaters in New York and Los Angeles for Orion Pictures, a $33,100 per-screen average. Next weekend brings Tom Cruise in Warner Bros.’ Digger and Amazon MGM Studios’ Verity, starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson.

Studios have spent years searching for a way to make September matter. This weekend, a seven-year-old Marvel movie, a video game adaptation, a Brad Pitt survival film and a $15 million A24 drama all found audiences at the same time. That is exactly the kind of depth theaters need heading into a holiday corridor anchored by Avengers: Doomsday.

Joanthan P. Moustakas

Jonathan P. Moustakas founded The Cinema Group in 2020 during the challenges of the pandemic, after losing the vital ability to find community in theaters and escape through the captivating magic of cinema. Feeling profoundly cut off from the vibrant film community he cherished, he sought to create a welcoming home for dedicated cinema fans while providing engaging, daily curated content that resonates with their passions. Years later, The Cinema Group has blossomed from a small collective of loyal fans into a thriving brand that reaches millions of audiences every month across a diverse array of platforms and mediums.

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