The story, without spoilers
Endgame picks up after the worst day in the Avengers' history. Thanos has used the Infinity Stones to wipe out half of all life in the universe, and the heroes who are left, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Thor, Bruce Banner and the rest, have to decide what living with that failure looks like.
When an unlikely possibility appears, they come together for one last attempt to set things right. The plan sends them back through places and moments from across the earlier Marvel films, which is half the pleasure for long-time viewers, and asks each of the original Avengers what they are willing to give up.
It is a long film, at 181 minutes, and it spends its first stretch on grief rather than action. Characters who have always been sure of themselves are shown struggling, and some have changed a great deal. That quieter opening gives the later spectacle its weight, because the audience has seen exactly what the heroes are trying to undo.
Behind the scenes
Endgame is the direct sequel to Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and the 22nd film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Anthony and Joe Russo shot the two films back to back: filming began in August 2017 at Pinewood Atlanta Studios in Fayette County, Georgia, and ended in January 2018, with additional shooting around Atlanta, in New York state, in Scotland and in England.
Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely wrote both films, and Kevin Feige produced. The time-travel structure let the writers revisit earlier MCU films from new angles, and Alan Silvestri's score brings back his Avengers theme for the film's biggest moments.
Marvel announced it in October 2014 as Avengers: Infinity War – Part 2, then dropped that title; the real name was revealed only in December 2018. The Russo brothers signed on in April 2015 and the writers a month later. With an estimated budget of $356–400 million, it is one of the most expensive films ever made. It premiered at the Los Angeles Convention Center on 22 April 2019 and opened in the United States four days later as part of Phase Three of the MCU.
The ensemble is among the largest ever assembled for one film. Alongside Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner, the cast includes Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Jon Favreau, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow and Josh Brolin as Thanos, with many more actors returning from earlier films for the scenes that revisit them.
Why it still matters
Endgame was built as a finale to eleven years of interlocking films, and audiences treated it as one. It overtook the entire theatrical run of Infinity War within eleven days, set a string of box-office records and became the highest-grossing film of all time, a title it held from 2019 until 2021, when Avatar passed it again after a re-release in China.
No franchise had tried to close so many storylines at once, and the result shaped how studios think about a shared universe. Its single Oscar nomination, for visual effects, is a reminder that its achievement was scale and payoff more than prestige.
The story did not end in 2021. Disney returned the film to cinemas in 2026 as Avengers: Endgame – Encore, ahead of Avengers: Doomsday, which is due on 18 December 2026, and its takings lifted Endgame past Avatar again, to an estimated $2.9255 billion against Avatar's $2.9237 billion.
The margin is tiny. Disney announced on 4 October 2026 that Endgame had reclaimed the record, and Deadline reported that the gap between the two films was under $2 million. Encore opened at number one in North America with $26.1 million, then fell 81 percent in its second weekend. By then the re-release had added about $126 million worldwide, $36.2 million of it in the United States and Canada, and it had become the highest-grossing re-release across Latin America. NPR noted that the two films trading the crown reflects rising ticket prices more than rising attendance, and both are now Disney releases.