Avatar: The Way of Water is halfway to the $2 billion goal Director James Cameron has hoped for in order to be profitable. While final holiday weekend global revenue numbers are not yet reported, as of yesterday, the latest installment has managed to pull in over $850 million in just 10 days and is expected to pass $1 billion by the new year. To date, only Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World: Dominion have managed to get past the $1B mark in 2022. The original Avatar movie, after multiple releases over 13 years, eventually took back the crown of the highest-grossing movie in history with a global tally of $2.97 billion while this sequel currently sits at 5th position for 2022 at $855.4 million.
The sequel is also experiencing a similar set of circumstances as its 2009 predecessor surrounding its release in that both movies were released during the December block of holidays while severe winter weather pummeled parts of North America. However, it seems even with challenging weather conditions Americans have still found a way to gather at the theaters to experience the over three-hour movie.
Breakdown of numbers as of December 25
- $253.7 million domestically including $56 million from North America over the weekend, shown in 4,202 theaters
- $602 million internationally- Including $100.5 million from China, $53 million in Korea, $52.3 million in France, $37 million from India, and $35.7 million from Germany
- Estimated $350 million budget
- $97 million from Imax globally
“’Avatar: The Way of Water’ is showing the strong endurance at the global box office we expected, particularly with its phenomenal performance internationally where several key markets grew their grosses over opening weekend,” said Rich Gelfond, CEO of Imax. “Our screens remain the destination of choice to experience this one-of-a-kind film.”
Crushing the competition
Avatar: The Way of Water effectively crushed the competition at the box office this weekend as many moviegoers opted to return to Pandora instead of watching other offerings such as the Hollywood extravaganza Babylon, starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, and the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody. The former has costs of over $80 million and is estimated to make $5.3 million by today with the ladder costing around $45 million and is expected to pull in around $9 million by today. Meanwhile, the animated sequel, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, is performing strongly and has generated $57.2 million globally during its debut weekend and was budgeted at $90 million. One last mention is that Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is nearing $800 million globally following just over seven weeks of release.
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →I literally have met zero people who are interested in it or have watched it.
My son watched it and said it was alright. It's like watching a action movie after the Matrix. It's hard to be as exciting as something so new.
1/3 of the way there!
I have no interest in seeing it, and nobody else I know cares to see it either.
I ran into the neighbor’s kids (19 and 22) tonight. They watched it mid day today and are planning on seeing it again tomorrow in IMAX for the “full experience”. I may no longer be the target demographic…
#METOO
I'll definitely be waiting until it streams and even if by some miracle I like it, won't buy the physical until I'm sure he's not doing the extended whatever cut months later.
Even when the blu-ray rips drop, I don't think I will bother to see it.
I don’t think this is a watch it at home movie in general. Every few years since the 70s you get a special effects marvel that redefined special effects. They don’t necessarily hold up all that well and it may not carry over to the smaller screen.
If I were going to watch it, I would be in for the full IMAX viewing, but I’ve got small kids I wouldn’t take, and I’m no longer interested enough in fancy special effects to justify spending for a baby sitter.
I think I'm ok with that.
While I'm not over watching a movie for good special effects, I am over watching a movie ~only~ because it has good special effects. If it happens to roll up on D+ or something that I already happen to subscribe to, I'll probably watch it for sheer sake of curiosity - but I don't intend to pay anything to watch it, it just doesn't interest me right now.
I'll take the ability to pause, to turn up (or down) the volume, to drink a beer, to make my popcorn however I want it, to rewind... all of that stuff and more, over the ability to watch it on a 32' screen. There isn't a special effect invented, by Cameron or anyone else, that trumps those other benefits. My Home Theater isn't all that bad.
I suppose if I wanted to break it down to cost/benefit, I've probably spent more on my home theater than I would have if I watched every single movie that I have watched at home on it out in a theater. But if you add in dinner and drinks, I've definitely pulled ahead there, and I still have the ability to control the remote control - that is ~priceless~.
I so dislike this big screen elitism, if a movie is trash it is trash no matter if I watch it on a bootleg VHS from the 90s, or on the hyper-super most bestest awesomest trimax dolby thx megamax.
I’ll use Jurassic Park as an example here. The idea the film is pretty good, and the special effects were absolutely fantastic and amazing in a THX theater in 1993. I completely loved the movie in the theater.
When it finally got around to VHS in, what, 95(?) it already had lost some luster because of how fast special effects were moving. On top of the perceived decline of the effects over 2 years, I was watching it at home on low quality VHS on roughly a 21” screen in the living room. It had lost some to most of the suspense that you had in the theater.
I caught part of it on TV a few years back, and what I was one amazed at looked pretty hokey and I didn’t bother watching past the first commercial break.
You can replace Jurassic park with first Avatar, The Day After Tomorrow, Transformers, and others that were pretty cool in the theater at release that are nothing special now.
Were they special because they were in a theatre, or because they broke some ground at the time?
I mean: if they re-released Jurassic Park today, would it still be as good in a theatre? Or to ask it differently: When you watched it on VHS later, was it worse just because it wasn't in a THX theatre, or was it because what made it special at the time had already become "normal" for many other movies as well?
Yeah, I will admit that hearing the dinosaurs walking, that scene with the glass of water: it was pretty cool. It is also pretty cool on my Home Theatre with a subwoofer though, even today, and yeah, louder subs make it more intense, I admit. But not cool enough to make me give up my remote control.
Because they broke ground at the time, combined and further enhanced by an experience that couldn’t be recreated by most people at home in 93.
I tried to cover the answer to that in the 2 year delay from theater to VHS. The effects that were special had become commonplace by 95, AND the average home setup couldn’t convey the spectacle you got in the theater. In other words, Not only was I used that level of special effects, My parents certainly didn’t have the sub to make that glass of water scene work like it did in the theater.
We had the “Half hearted” home theater at my last house. Previous owners had put black carpet on the walls of the basement, put a couple speaker mounts on the walls for rears, and painted the support pole in the middle of the room Black. We put in a 67” rear projection and 5.1 surround and it was fine. In the end we found we preferred the “activity, dinner, and a movie” experience at the local ultra screen for action movies with big special effects. For something like Amelie, the home theater was fine, but so was the 36” Sony XBR too.
We will probably never get around to putting in a home theater in the new house’s basement.
That's only the first viewing bias. When you first see a movie it seems better. It happened to me with Phantom Menace which I saw first in theater, but also happened with Force Awakens which I saw first at home. Subsequent viewings reveal more and more issues that I glossed over during the first watch. If you saw Jurassic Part at home first you'd still think it was awesome at first. Hell I even thought Congo was good when I first saw it, only to be shocked when I re-watched it 20 years later.