On its fourth weekend of release and showing few signs of slowing down, James Cameron’s popular sequel Avatar: The Way of the Water exceeded $1.7 billion in global revenue and surpassed $516 million domestically.
Official IMAX poster for “Avatar: The Way of the Water”
Down just 33% this weekend, Avatar 2 looks increasingly likely to hit the $2 billion threshold despite initial doubts that it would have the momentum to take it to such a dizzying figure. But here we are once again, passing portions of raven to the naysayers who insisted that this would finally be the time doubting Cameron would pay off.
With an audience rating of “A” via Cinemascore and a 77% critic score from Rotten Tomatoes, Avatar: The Way of the Water enjoyed back-to-back Christmas and New Years holiday weekends, taking full advantage of out-of-school children and parents and other adults on holiday. I ranked Avatar: The Way of the Water among the greatest films of 2022 (you can see the full list here), and you can read my full review of the movie here.
The result was enough word of mouth and loyalty to lift the film over several bumps, including a lower than expected opening, the Chinese box office suppressed by the uncontrollable spread of Covid, a lack of release in Russia due from the ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine, and a domestic surge of Covid-flu-RSV and inflation that has slowed theater attendance.
Now, Avatar: The Way of the Water looks unstoppable and has little competition for several more weeks. Even with the back-to-school season and return to normal after the holidays, the film is still expected to enjoy high turnout and continued box office dominance until Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania arrives February 17.
That is, unless James Cameron himself becomes his own contest on February 10 when Titanic returns to cinemas in remastered 4K HDR and 3D, which will carry over some of the high-end cinema formats – IMAX and Dolby Cinema – which are currently offering excellent returns for Avatar: The Way of the Water. I don’t think Titanic will make a major dent in Avatar 2 performance, but it’s sure to get a decent amount of attention and footfall, and it’ll be interesting to see how successful the remastered 3D version becomes.
Elsewhere at the box office this weekend, Universal scored a huge hit with Gerard Johnstone’s sci-fi horror comedy M3GAN, generating $45 million in worldwide sales. With a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score and a high audience rating for Cinemascore’s B horror, M3GAN is a crowd pleaser and is gaining a lot of affection for its fun marketing approach. It was going to take something particularly remarkable to catch the attention of Avatar: The Way of the Waterand luckily for everyone involved M3GAN rose to the task.
A co-production between Blumhouse and Atomic Monster (James Wan’s studio) and with a modest budget of 12 million dollars, M3GAN is already a sufficient success to ensure a sequel, which the distributor Universal has indeed already announced.
When will Peyton Reed’s Marvel Studios super-sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania debuts in late February, all bets are off when it comes to box office dominance. The MCU is using the film to introduce Jonathan Majors’ villainous character Kang the Conqueror to movie audiences – he’s already appeared on Marvel’s Disney+ streaming series Lokiand will be the villain in the next one Avengers: Kang Dynasty (2025), as well as likely appearing in the massive follow-up superhero crossover Avengers: Secret Wars (2026).
Marvel is waiting for the latter Ant-Man and the Wasp sequel to propel this franchise to its biggest box office returns yet. The previous entry, Ant-Man and the Waspgrossed $622 million in 2018, and the third film is expected to easily surpass that figure.
But for now, Avatar: The Way of the Water still has over five weeks mostly for itself, including those premium cinemas with their more expensive 3D tickets up to Titanic takes some of these screens in five weeks, so expect to see a lot more reports on Avatar 2 score one great weekend after another.
At this point, I’m waiting Avatar: The Way of the Water could cross the $2 billion mark by the end of January. If it continues to see small weekly declines even after families return to normal school and work hours, it could hit $2 billion even sooner. Or, if the loss of holidaymakers leads to more typical declines, it could be the first week of February before we see Avatar 2 exceeding the magic number of 2 billion dollars.
But right now, I see nothing to suggest that $2 billion is out of reach, and all signs point to an inevitable end of more than $2 billion for Avatar: The Way of the Water. I’ll continue to update you on the film’s box office, dear readers, so stay tuned and be sure to check back here soon for more news and analysis.