‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Enters a Box Office Fight It May Already Be Losing

Marvel’s 2026 slate has been building toward one massive showdown for months, with two of the studio’s biggest franchises set to anchor opposite ends of the calendar. Fans have spent the year debating which release would ultimately define the year at the box office, and the conversation has only grown louder as both films inch closer to their premieres.

Part of that buzz traces back to San Diego Comic-Con 2024, when Robert Downey Jr. stepped onto the Hall H stage wearing Doctor Doom’s mask and green cloak, confirming his shocking return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Victor Von Doom rather than Tony Stark. Robert Downey Jr. is returning to the film franchise as classic Fantastic Four villain Doctor Doom for ‘Avengers: Doomsday’, with Joe and Anthony Russo directing. “New mask, same task,” Downey told the crowd to frenzied cheers during the panel, an appearance that instantly became one of the most talked about moments of that year’s convention.

Now a new wrinkle has emerged, and it comes from the account Daily Loud, which pointed out that ‘Avengers Doomsday’ opens with less than two weeks left in 2026 and still only has a 13 percent chance of becoming the year’s highest grossing movie, according to Polymarket traders, while ‘Spider-Man Brand New Day’ sits at 74 percent.

The math behind that gap comes down almost entirely to timing. Doomsday will arrive in theaters on December 17, 2026, while Tom Holland’s fourth Spider-Man installment lands on July 31, 2026, giving Marvel’s webslinger nearly five months to rack up ticket sales before the calendar resets. Since Avengers Doomsday opens in the second week of December, it will have only about two weeks to build its 2026 total, and any earnings from January onward count toward 2027 instead.

These odds have shifted dramatically over the course of the year. Earlier in 2026, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie actually led the prediction market at 39 percent, with Spider-Man Brand New Day trailing at 31 percent and Avengers Doomsday sitting at 18 percent, before Spider-Man’s marketing rollout picked up steam and pushed its implied probability past 45 percent by April. It is a reminder that these numbers reflect trader sentiment rather than any judgment on quality, and a slower calendar year climb does not necessarily mean a weaker film.

‘Avengers Doomsday’ reunites heroes from across the Avengers, X-Men and Fantastic Four rosters against Doctor Doom, before the story continues directly into Avengers Secret Wars a year later. Given Marvel’s history of December releases that keep earning well into the following January, the film’s true cultural and financial impact may end up stretching far beyond what a strict 2026 cutoff can measure, even if the prediction market says otherwise on paper.

Do you think ‘Avengers Doomsday’ can shrug off these betting odds once Doctor Doom finally hits the big screen?