We’re officially on the road to Avengers: Doomsday. The massive Marvel Studios blockbuster is just over a year away from its planned debut in theaters, and it already has fans in a flurry.
When will Doomsday‘s first trailer debut? Which “leaked” photos from the set are AI-generated, and which might be real? What characters will appear in the film who didn’t get a chair during the eight-hour-long livestream earlier this spring?
We don’t know the definitive answers to any of these questions, but we do know something else: on Friday, Disney and Marvel Studios officially announced plans to re-release 2019’s Avengers: Endgame in theaters on 2026, before Doomsday makes its debut that December. The re-release will begin on September 25, 2026, but it is unclear exactly how long it will last for.
In some ways, this should have been expected. Endgame and 2009’s Avatar are probably perpetually going to be in a shootout over being the highest-grossing movie of all time. Disney, who owns both films, has already re-released Avatar multiple times to get it back on top… and it stands to reason that this new run of Endgame could close the gap between the two films. Plus, the re-release could very well have a new/final trailer for Doomsday attached to the end of it (like Captain America: The First Avenger did for The Avengers back in 2011), to incentivize people to go see it in theaters.
But I also feel like this re-release could open a proverbial can of worms, especially concerning Robert Downey Jr.’s highly-publicized return to the franchise as Doomsday‘s titular villain, Victor von Doom / Doctor Doom. Ever since I sat in San Diego Comic-Con’s Hall H in 2024 and watched Downey’s casting be announced to thunderous (and baffled) fanfare, I have wondered how exactly this is going to be sold to general audiences, many of whom still know and love his take on Tony Stark / Iron Man.
Will Doomsday lean into the idea of the face of the franchise’s first hero now being worn by its biggest villain? We’ll have to wait and see. But for people who have been more casually following the MCU post-Endgame (or haven’t watched anything in the franchise since it), seeing Downey as Tony during the film’s re-release months before seeing him again as Doom, is going to be a bizarre and potentially confusing experience.
That might even be the case for those who don’t even physically go to the re-release, but see the marketing campaign that Disney is undoubtedly going to run for it. I would be shocked if those TV spots and trailers don’t include shots of Tony Stark, and maybe even the “I am Iron Man” moment that the entire movie culminates towards. It’s an interesting conundrum, but it’s one that might further complicate the already-tough sell of Downey’s recasting.
We can’t recreate the experience of seeing Avengers: Endgame for the first time…
Endgame became one of the biggest movies of all time for a good reason. In addition to just dealing with the shocking emotional fallout of Avengers: Infinity War, it culminated years of the MCU’s linear storytelling unlike anything that popular culture had ever seen. Fans went to it again and again: not just to absorb more of the three-hour-long story, but to soak in the reactions of people experiencing it for the first time. It was an event, with the summer of 2019 being filled with videos and audio recordings of audiences audibly reacting to certain big moments.
Marvel Studios’ official post about the re-release even leans into this, with a 15-second teaser video that is simply the film’s logo with the sound of those original audience reactions in the background. The only problem is… those reactions aren’t going to hit the same this time around. The vast majority of the people who go to Endgame‘s re-release are not only going to have already seen the movie, but they’re going to know it like the back of their hand. Any attempt to loudly hoot and holler just like they did when they first saw the movie is going to feel different: not just because we already know what’s coming, but because we know everything that has or hasn’t changed (in the MCU and in the real world) since 2019.
Do I like the idea of continuing to preserve the theatrical experience by watching Endgame on a big screen again? Absolutely… but a part of me almost wants to preserve the magic of watching it in the summer of 2019. Luckily, it sounds like I still have plenty of time to think it over before I’d need to buy a ticket.
(featured image: Marvel Studios)
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