AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY is Already Being Crowned 2026’s Box Office King By "Industry Experts"
If you needed another reminder that Hollywood loves stating the obvious, here it is. Over 700 industry experts have weighed in and declared Avengers: Doomsday the most likely box office champ of 2026. Shocking, right?
According to a new report from ComicBookMovie, the next big Marvel Cinematic Universe event is being positioned as the movie to beat, with 174 experts flat-out saying it’ll outgross everything else releasing that year. Yeah, Marvel has spent the last few years getting dragged for losing its mojo, but Doomsday has all the things that will make it a massive hit.
The MCU hasn’t exactly been riding a nonstop victory lap lately. Outside of hits like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel’s box office dominance has cooled off. That’s why all eyes are on December 2026, when Doomsday drops a multiversal hammer on everything.
In the film, a universe-level threat shows up, panic ensues, and familiar heroes come running back into frame to stop it. The big hook here is the return of Robert Downey Jr., not as Iron Man, but as the iconic villain Doctor Doom. Chris Evans is even set to return as Steve Rogers. Marvel knows exactly what it’s doing.
It also helps that the last Avengers outing, Avengers: Endgame, became one of the highest-grossing films of all time. That kind of history makes predicting Doomsday as a box office monster feel less like analysis and more like common sense. Do we really need 700 experts to tell us this? Probably not, but here we are.
That said, the experts didn’t pretend Doomsday was alone in the race. Eight films were cited as potential challengers, even if most of them feel like they’re fighting uphill. Coming in second was The Super Mario Galaxy Movie with 139 votes. The first Mario movie pulled in $1.3 billion, so underestimating Nintendo would be a mistake.
Third place went to Toy Story 5 with 109 votes. Pixar films are beloved, sure, but they don’t always dominate the global box office the way Marvel does. Toy Story 4 topped out at $844 million worldwide, which is strong but not Avengers-level chaos.
Fourth place might be the most interesting entry on the list. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey grabbed 104 votes. Nolan’s last film, Oppenheimer, shocked everyone by nearly hitting a billion dollars. A mythic epic could absolutely show up swinging.
Rounding things out were Dune: Part Three with 55 votes, The Mandalorian and Grogu at 43, Minions 3 with 41, and Disney’s live-action Moana also landing at 41.
Marvel has already started rolling out marketing for Doomsday, and the reaction has been… loud. Seeing Steve Rogers and Thor back in the mix has fans either cheering or rolling their eyes. Some love the comfort of familiar faces. Others think Marvel’s hitting rewind instead of moving forward.
But box office numbers don’t care about discourse. They care about butts in seats. If fans drifting away from the MCU is tied to missing the old heroes, then Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars give Marvel a chance to handle those exits better and set the table properly for what comes next.
That future is supposed to be big, and it’s going to be interesting to see how everything plays out over the course of the next two Avengers films. If Avengers: Doomsday really does deliver, it might be the reset button the genre desperately needs.
So yeah, 700 experts think Doomsday wins 2026. Shocker. The real question isn’t whether it’ll dominate the box office. It’s whether Marvel can use that win to finally convince fans that the future is worth sticking around for.