So here's a fun one for your Sunday scrolling: a seven-year-old movie just walked into theaters and beat everything new that dared open against it. Avengers: Endgame Encore topped the weekend box office over every fresh title out there, according to USA Today, pulling off what the paper calls a big debut against the new releases.

Let that sink in. New movies, with marketing budgets and press tours and the whole apparatus behind them, lost the weekend to a film most of us have already seen at least twice. Some of us considerably more than twice, but I'm not going to incriminate myself here.

People showed up. Again. For a movie that ends the same way it's ended since 2019. And when you think about it, the appeal isn't mysterious. It's a beloved three-hour blockbuster packed wall to wall with movie stars, back on the big screen, with a crowd that knows when to cheer. If you're going to leave the house for anything right now, that's an easy sell.

There's also the communal factor, which I keep banging on about because it keeps being true. People will leave the house for a shared experience they can't get at home, and Endgame is maybe the ultimate version of that. The portals scene in a packed theater with an audience losing its collective mind is one of the defining moviegoing memories of the last decade. Disney is essentially selling the concert experience for a film, and the crowds are paying for the encore, pun absolutely intended.

USA Today has the full breakdown of the numbers if you want the nitty gritty, and the debut was big enough that I'd bet money this won't be the last catalog title Disney digs out of the vault. That's pure speculation on my part, to be clear. But the vault is deep and audiences keep saying yes.

I didn't catch Encore this weekend because I was busy with The Simpsons premiere and a stack of fall screeners, but I'll be real with you: I'm tempted. Not for the plot. For the crowd. If you went this weekend, tell me if the portals scene still hits the same with a room full of strangers. I suspect I already know the answer.