Avengers: Endgame Likely to Lose Box Office Record to Avatar This Weekend

Avengers: Endgame hit theaters nearly two years ago, and just a few weeks ahead of the anniversary of the blockbuster's release — it's on the verge of losing its biggest box office record. Early numbers from the Chinese box office have started coming in (via Deadline) and it's appearing increasingly likely Avatar will dethrone the Marvel tentpole as the highest-grossing movie to ever hit the global box office.

On the rebound in a post-COVID world, the box office has started to show some promise in China, where exhibitors started re-screening the James Cameron feature this week. The earliest numbers suggest Avatar has grossed around $3.5 million on Friday. Prior to this latest screening, Endgame sat atop the charters with a $7.4M cushion over its second-place competitor.

Now when you factor in the anticipated box office receipts from Saturday and Sunday, industry insiders expect Avatar to become the highest-grossing movie in the land once again by next week. That is, of course, until Endgame inevitably hits theaters on another re-release as more and more theaters continue to reopen around the world.

In the United States, theaters are slowly opening in the country's two-biggest movie markets — New York and Los Angeles. While exhibitors have been slowly reopening in the Big Apple for a few weeks now, theaters in Tinsel Town can start reopening as soon as the weekend with limited audiences.

"Southern California, you will be a beneficiary of this," California Governor Gavin Newsom shared earlier this week. "Specifically, L.A. will be a big beneficiary of this new metric that likely will be met on Friday. And moving through the weekend and into next week, you will see more activity, more loosening of the tiers. That's encouraging and I hope people will be enthusiastic about what this means moving forward, because we have a series of other thresholds and other goals that will allow us to move forward with more clarity, more conviction, and more confidence as we move through the next few weeks and the next few months."

Avengers: Endgame and Avatar are now streaming on Disney+.