After a massive Christmas turnout, “Avatar: The Way of Water” surpassed another major box office hit with global ticket sales of $955.1 million.
The long-awaited James Cameron film grossed $293 million at the domestic box office and $661 million internationally. In just two weeks, “The Way of Water” has surpassed the global box office numbers of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” ($800 million), “The Batman” ($770 million), and “Thor: Love and Thunder.” ($760 million) and “Minions: The Rise of Gru” ($939 million). It is currently tied with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($955.7 million worldwide) as the third highest-grossing film of the year.
The movie “Avatar” is expected to continue its dominance next week, even with severe winter weather in the United States and rising cases of the emerging coronavirus, RSV virus and influenza worldwide, which limited ticket sales. In the next few days, Disney and 20th Century’s $350 million budget for Waterway will reach $1 billion. It’s the threshold that only two other films, “Top Gun: Maverick” ($1.48 billion worldwide) and “Jurassic World Dominion” ($1.001 billion worldwide), have managed to achieve in 2022.
“Avatar 2” needs to exceed expectations with massive ticket sales to justify its massive price tag. Cameron estimated that the film would need to generate approximately $2 billion to break even, though analysts believe the profitability threshold is probably closer to $1.5 billion.
Although “Avatar: The Way of Water” proves to be another solid draw on the big screen, the follow-up film will struggle to reach the towering heights of its predecessor, the highest-grossing release in history with $2.97 billion worldwide. That’s because the worldwide box office has not fully recovered from the pandemic, and important markets like China are seeing a resurgence of the virus. What’s more, the sequel won’t play in Russia, as the original has just over $100 million.
Outside North America, “Avatar 2” enjoyed the strongest reception in China with $104 million, followed by France with $60 million, Korea with $55.4 million, Germany with $41.5 million, and India with $39.2 million.
Like the original, “Water Method” is particularly popular in Emacs. It has already surpassed $105.5 million worldwide at Imax, marking the company’s fastest pandemic-era film to pass that benchmark. To date, the Imax film has taken 11.4% of the film’s worldwide gross.
“Avatar: The Way of Water shows the global box office stamina we have come to expect,” said Imax CEO Rich Gelfond. In just over a week of its release, Avatar: The Way of Water has moved past $100 million at the IMAX box office with no signs of slowing down.
[ad_2]
