Unless Avengers: Doomsday’s Box Office Destroys Infinity War, It’ll Be An Unwanted First For The MCU

Published Aug 30, 2026, 3:00 PM EDT Zoë Miskelly is an editor and second in command for Screen Rant's Movies team, having covered the entertainment industry for almost 10 years now. Zoë's love of superheroes and all things Marvel & DC started out in childhood, and has blossomed into a career getting to talk about some of the biggest and best movies and shows of all time, having previously focused on comics while working at WhatCulture. Sign in to your ScreenRant account 2026 has set a high bar for Avengers: Doomsday, as the upcoming MCU movie needs to beat the box office results of Avengers: Infinity War by a not inconsiderable amount in order to avoid a first for the franchise. The MCU timeline has managed some staggeringly impressive box office results over the years, largely in the Avengers film series, which makes the impending release of Avengers: Doomsday this year a decidedly exciting matter, as it seems another major hit may be just over the horizon for the franchise. That said, this also means the next Avengers movie has some big shoes to step into, as there's been 7 years of buildup between Avengers: Endgame and now, and since Avengers: Doomsday and its sequel Avengers: Secret Wars are sure to be compared closely to Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, especially since both end different eras for the franchise. Thanks to 2026's latest MCU success story, another challenge of sorts has been imposed on Avengers: Doomsday and its own prospective results, since the movie needs to make over $2 billion if it's to avoid breaking one particular box office record that the Avengers series has kept up until this point as a result of its financial takings. Avengers: Doomsday Now Needs To Beat Avengers: Infinity War's Box Office To Be 2026's Biggest MCU Movie 2026's only released MCU movie thus far has made something of a splash to say the least, as Spider-Man: Brand New Day's box office currently sits at the $2.3 billion mark, making it one of the franchise's biggest box office success stories to date. Indeed, Spider-Man: Brand New Day's healthy box office sum is all the more notable because the movie outgrosses every MCU movie bar Avengers: Endgame (which made around $2.7 billion), meaning it also outstrips Avengers: Infinity War, which itself made $2 billion - a sum that previously made it the MCU's second-highest grossing movie until the recent results of Brand New Day. Notably, this would also mean that, in order to become the highest-grossing MCU movie of the year - a record every Avengers movie has held until now - Avengers: Doomsday would need to make a notable chunk more than Avengers: Infinity War in order to also make more than Spider-Man: Brand New Day and crown itself the top spot on 2026's MCU box office leaderboards. Spider-Man: Brand New Day's box office total makes it clear that this is a possibility that would require Doomsday to be a serious hit with audiences to achieve, particularly with the context that doing so would also mean the 2026 Avengers movie would need to make substantially more than the second most successful Avengers film of all time, since Doomsday would thus need to be a borderline Endgame-level success in this regard. How Avengers: Doomsday Could Make $2.3B+ In Its Box Office Takings While becoming 2026's highest-grossing MCU movie is no small task by any means, it's clear this isn't a scenario that's incapable of becoming reality, so long as the various ways in which Avengers: Doomsday has already courted audiences this early on play out right upon its theatrical debut. First and foremost, the fact that the cast of Avengers: Doomsday draws from a huge range of viable corners of the Marvel movie world means its prospective audience should be a considerable one. This is doubly true given the choice to include figures like Chris Evans' Steve Rogers and Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom, with audiences no doubt sure to arrive en masse in order to see how the film's story handles reincorporating these MCU actors back into the franchise as well. Combined with Avengers: Doomsday being the first Avengers movie in the series after Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day's major success before Doomsday's release likely bolstering audience interest and trust in the MCU and its movie offerings, it's easy to see how Doomsday could be a box office smash that parallels or exceeds some of the franchise's biggest hits - though only time will tell how its reception and the financial results tied to it play out.