Baby, it’s cold outside. Very cold. And for family-friendly films with an already-difficult long run time, that’s never the best news. Despite the gloomy weather, however, Avatar: The Way of Water has seen a rather miraculous upswing in domestic takings. While it will likely be too little, too late, to knock Top Gun: Maverick off the domestic Number 1 spot, it will certainly lift the spirits of those left glum by its poor opening weekend. Brandon Blake, entertainment lawyer at Blake & Wang P.A, has more for us.
Final 4-Day Holiday Numbers
Avatar: The Way of Water comes in with a $95.5M second 4-day weekend total. Globally, of course, it’s doing very well, having crossed the $1B mark and looking fit to take the international Number 1 spot for 2022.
Domestically, that 4-day weekend is a hair under Rogue One’s, the last release with a comparable Christmas Sunday (2016). It’s running on a total domestic cume about 26% ahead of the original film and could cross the $400M threshold by the New Year’s weekend with luck.
IMAX Record
Avatar 2 has also netted $105.5M for the IMAX global box office in under 2 weeks. This makes it the fastest film to cross the $100M mark there since early 2019. It’s also only the 9th film to cross that mark at all. IMAX is currently accounting for 11.4% of the film’s global gross, despite being a fraction of the total screens showing it. Domestically, it’s taken 38M in North America, 14% of total ticket sales.
While it may still not hit the lofty original predictions for the film, it’s certainly been a far better week for the second Avatar movie than we could have predicted from its lackluster start. Maybe not quite a Christmas Miracle, but we’re sure no one is complaining!
