The box office race between Avengers: Endgame and Avatar is almost at an end. The Marvel movie event has been trying to dethrone the James Cameron sci-fi epic as the world’s highest-grossing film since it released in April, but with the next MCU entry – Spider-Man: Far From Home – due to arrive at the start of July, time is running out. As it stands, there’s just the matter of about $40 million between them.
According to the latest stats from Box Office Mojo, Endgame is exactly $43.5 million behind Avatar in total gross. If you want the full figures, the former is currently sitting at $2.7445 billion, while Avatar‘s $2.788 billion is the number to beat.
Ordinarily at this stage, we might say that Marvel should probably throw in the towel, but the House of Ideas isn’t giving up without a fight and might just have an ace up their sleeve. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed on Wednesday that Endgame will get a re-release next weekend that’ll add in an extra seven minutes of footage, including a Stan Lee tribute, a deleted scene and post-credits sequences.
The big promotional push hasn’t started for this yet, but you can be sure that Marvel will be putting their all behind it in a bid to get people back in theaters to watch Endgame at least one more time, thereby ticking the counter just over the line to pass Avatar. But will it be enough? After the initial news of “an extended cut,” some fans were left unimpressed with the relatively small increase in runtime in the Endgame re-release. Does that mean most will give it a miss, though?
Time will tell, but this one really could go either way, it seems. If you wish to help out Avengers: Endgame in the race, be sure to check out the movie’s re-release next weekend.