Avengers: Endgame Re-Release to Include New Footage

Marvel confirmed Thursday in Las Vegas that the September 25 re-release of “Avengers: Endgame” won’t be a straight reissue. It’ll include brand new footage.

The announcement came during the Walt Disney Studios presentation at CinemaCon, where Anthony Russo and his brother Joe told the room what the studio had been hinting at for months: the 2026 return of “Endgame” is engineered to run point for December’s “Avengers: Doomsday.” For the Burbank lot, it’s a two-for-one marketing move that turns a seven-year-old film into live ammunition for one of the biggest releases Disney has scheduled in years.

Disney’s investor relations filings show how much the studio is counting on the December theatrical window. The Doomsday release sits at the center of that strategy, and the September re-release of Endgame is the runway Disney built to get there.

The logic isn’t subtle. Bring audiences back to a film they already love, show them something they haven’t seen, and walk them out of the theater thinking about what comes next. A source familiar with the studio’s campaign framing told Burbank Digest the approach is two-pronged: “first, refreshing the emotional memory of what that story accomplished, and then walking them into” the December release already primed. That’s a harder pitch than a trailer. It’s also a more expensive one, which is why the Russo brothers’ direct involvement matters here.

Joe and Anthony Russo directed the original “Endgame” in 2019 and are back for “Doomsday.” They’re not licensing their names. They’re adding material that connects one film to the other, and that distinction separates this from the cash-grab re-releases that exhibitors have grown skeptical of since 2022, when superhero attendance started softening in ways the box office numbers couldn’t hide.

According to Variety, Marvel Studios signaled the re-release plans well before CinemaCon, but didn’t confirm the new footage component until Russo took the stage Thursday. The room responded. Theater owners aren’t hard to read when something lands, and this landed.

The National Association of Theatre Owners has spent the better part of the last three years pushing studios to give exhibitors genuine event programming, not streaming castoffs dressed up for a one-week theatrical window. A Marvel re-release with added footage, directed by the same team returning for the sequel, checks every box they’ve been asking studios to fill. Exhibitors don’t want to resell a product audiences already own at home on Disney+. They want a reason to buy a ticket.

September 25 is an interesting choice of date. That slot usually goes to adult dramas and early awards-season contenders. Disney’s putting a Marvel tentpole there instead, which tells you something about how aggressively the studio is approaching the back half of 2026. It’s also smart calendar management: the September date warms up IMAX and premium large-format screens six weeks ahead of when “Doomsday” will need them running at full capacity.

Disney’s done this before. The studio added footage to “Endgame” during its original 2019 theatrical run specifically to push past the global box office record held by “Avatar.” That campaign worked. “That campaign worked. The precedent is real, and the Burbank studio knows how to execute it.

What’s different this time is the stakes sitting on the other end of the calendar.”

In 2019, the goal was a box office record. In 2026, the goal is a December opening weekend. Different objectives, same tool. The Russo brothers are doing connective tissue work that no trailer package can replicate, and Disney is betting that audiences will pay 25 dollars to sit in a theater for that experience rather than wait for whatever surfaces on streaming six months later.

What the new footage actually shows hasn’t been disclosed. That detail will come later, closer to September, when Disney needs the press cycle to spike again.