Where does Avatar: The Way Of Water rank among the top box-office openings of 2022?
See how James Cameron's return to Pandora compares to this year's other major releases, including Top Gun: Maverick, Wakanda Forever, and The Batman
Film Features Avatar
As we reported yesterday, Avatar: The Way Of Water blew the competition out of the—ahem—water at the box office during its opening, handily coming in at number one with an estimated $134 million in domestic ticket sales. That was enough to oust Black Panther: Wakanda Forever from the top spot, where it has reigned for the past five weeks. But where does that put the Avatar sequel in relation to this year’s other big openings? We’ve run the numbers to find out.
One thing these figures show is a strong opening weekend doesn’t necessarily correlate with critical acclaim, or even long-term success. It can take a while for a film to catch on (like the original Avatar did)—and on the flip side, bad word of mouth can sink a film once it opens in theaters. We don’t expect either will be the case with Avatar: The Way Of Water, though. Glowing reviews and positive word of mouth are likely to keep it afloat for weeks to come. Okay, enough puns for now; onto the rankings.
9 Comments
I know Avatar did not blow the box office up this weekend but judging by others movies with similar openings its probably going to rake in over 300 million dollars. Cost to make is estimated at 250 mil. I know these are Hollywood numbers so who knows what is real but considering Cameron filmed most of the second and some of the third movie already. Not to mention part of the budget was developing new tech that will be used across the series. It may turn out that Jimmy still has a hit on his hand.
Yah it might not have the cultural impact of the last one, I don’t see the internet obsessing over it quite like after a Marvel film, but still pulled in that moula.
I thought the cost was somewhere around $500 million (according to Cameron)? He keeps saying it needs to be the third or fourth highest grossing film of all time to break even. Either way the next one is done filming so hard to imagine Disney won’t release it (though I guess they could save a small fortune not working on the effects for it over the next two years).
I’ve seen as low as $200 to as high as $500 million to make. It’s Hollywood accounting so who knows. Plus when movies are in production this long, things get much murkier. It also gets confusing because he made another movie at the same time so how do you balance the budget between them. I think we will get the third one. Even if Jimmy has to sell a few fancy submarines to do it. But I think the 7 movie plan may not be happening 🙂
True–Hollywood accounting always seem to be whatever they need it to be to fit the story at the time…I will say seven movies seems kind of ridiculous haha. Even five sounded crazy, but I guess if he’s just going to retell the same story over and over again it might not be that nuts. Rocky basically did that through, what, 9 films now (counting Creed)?
I think he was considering Avatar 2 and 3 as more or less one “movie” since he filmed both at the same time. So I think that’s where he got the it needs $2 billion to break even thing. Figure $500 mill for production and another $500 mill for marketing, and studios REQUIRE a 100% ROI to consider a film a success, more or less, get’s you to $2 billion to be considered a success. Will it hit that, who knows, but if it has the legs the first one did it might. Remember the first was number 1 for I think 7 weeks straight, which while not the record the only one’s that beat it in the 80’s, and one in 97 Titanic, during those times movies spent MUCH MUCH longer in the theater. Unlike today, back in the 80’s it could take a year or MORE before a movie made it to home video, compared to maybe a couple months now, excluding streaming. So if you wanted to see a movie you HAD to go to the theater. And as for number 1, it was E.T. with 16 weeks
Yeah that makes sense that he might be thinking of the cost of making both so far (I can’t imagine he was working in the next year’s worth of expenses on 3, though, as then that $500M would seem low).I still like to tell my kids about the ads for Raiders of the Lost Ark in newspapers trumpeting it’s “52nd week in release!”–hard to imagine any movie being in theaters for six months anymore, much less a year. I imagine Titanic was probably the last movie to stay in theaters for a huge, extended run like that (note: I am not counting Morbius and it’s ‘rerelease’ haha)
Given how Avatar 1 with its completely cliched script, cardboard-thin characters, and utterly predictable hoary plot was one of the worst movies I’ve ever sat through in my life, I like thinking the $134M that Avatar 2 took in for the weekend take is a precursor to the flick falling on its face. The first one was such a turd, I’ve only watched it once. The second flick? I could care less.Now someone needs to have the balls adapting The Forever War…do something right in the world of SF moviemaking. The book’s twist ending is too cool. Everyone would leave the theater with a smile on their faces.
First I guess Avatar 2 has longer legs than Marvel movies. See how Top Gun opened and how much it made. This is not the same audience, not 15 years old who need to watch it right now.Also the movie made 300 millions in the rest of the world on opening which is huge. Wakanda Forever made overall 370 millions in the world. The movie will probably get over one billion globally. I don’t think it will reach Top Gun or even break even (it needs 2 billions according to James Cameron) but still it will be a nice success.