the correction

Avengers: Endgame will be re-released this fall as Avengers: Endgame Encore. The re-release will include new footage and corrected color grading. The original film was released in 2019. It made $2.793 billion at the box office.

The colors, specifically, were wrong.

Critics noted at the time that the film's palette was flat and muddy, leaning too heavily on browns and grays. Thanos, the central villain of the film, is a purple alien. In the original theatrical release, he was not purple enough. This was not an artistic choice. It was an error. The film made $2.793 billion with Thanos in the wrong shade of purple.

The re-release corrects this. Thanos will be visibly more purple. He will have deeper contrast and richer saturation, bringing him closer to his appearance in the source comics. The Mad Titan, who eliminated half of all life in the universe using six magical stones, will now look the way he was supposed to look in the first place. The version that made $2.793 billion was an approximation.

It is worth reviewing what happened in the 2019 film for people who may not have seen it. Thanos is a large purple alien who travels the universe collecting magical stones because he believes the universe has too many people in it. He collects all six stones and eliminates half of all life. The Avengers, a group of people with various superpowers, subsequently travel through time to collect the stones before Thanos does. They succeed. He attacks them anyway. Tony Stark, who started the whole enterprise in 2008 by deciding to build a robot suit instead of dying of a chest wound, uses the stones to defeat Thanos at the cost of his own life. Many people in theaters cried.

They cried in the presence of a Thanos who was not purple enough.

The Encore edition addresses this. The corrected Thanos will appear in September. The people who cried in 2019 will have the option to return and cry in the presence of the correct Thanos. Their memories of the original experience will remain in the wrong shade of purple. This is a philosophical question that Marvel Studios appears to have decided falls outside their area of responsibility.

The re-release will also include new footage setting up Avengers: Doomsday, the next film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is scheduled for December 18, 2026, and which will feature a new set of villains and a new set of complications. The new footage will be integrated into the existing film. Audiences will be able to see the new footage and the corrected purple simultaneously. These are two different improvements that happen to be packaged together.

Avengers: Endgame is the second-highest-grossing film in human history. The highest is Avatar, which was re-released with additional footage. The third is Titanic, which was re-released in 3D. There is a pattern here: the films that earn the most money are also the films most likely to be released again, for reasons that vary. Avatar needed more story. Titanic needed a dimension. Endgame needed Thanos to be more purple.

In each case, the audience that paid to see the first version has the option to pay to see the second version. Many of them will. This is the business model.

The corrected Thanos arrives September 25. He will be visibly more purple. This is confirmed. Whether he will be purple enough is a question that may require a third release to fully resolve.