Under a metaphorical box office Christmas tree, Avatar: The Way Of Water gets all the presents
Despite a monster snowstorm complicating things, James Cameron's epic came out on top, making nearly 50 million more than its closest competitor
Aux News Avatar
As Christmas 2022 box office numbers roll in, it’s clear the holiday weekend was all about two things: canceled flights and Avatar: The Way Of Water.
Even as a monster winter storm descended across the continental United States and confined many to their homes, it’s another weekend of victory for James Cameron’s latest. Avatar managed to bring in $64 million over Christmas weekend—a far cry from its nearest competition, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, which only brought in $12.4 million. (Even so, Puss In Boots is expected to secure some bragging rights as the third-highest-grossing film of the holiday season.)
So far, Avatar has grossed $261.7 million total and shows no signs of stopping. At least through the new year, there aren’t any releases lined up that stand to seriously rival Avatar’s dominance (who among the chronically-online set hasn’t seen an image of the Letterboxd-pilled Na’vi?) In just ten days, the film has already become the fifth-highest-grossing movie of 2022 and is well on its way to breaking the $1 billion mark. That’s something only Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World: Dominion have achieved this year—even Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s worldwide gross still hovers around the $800 million mark.
In more dour news, Damian Chazelle’s silent-era epic Babylon, much like a set piece featured in the film’s first hour, crashed and burned as the industry kept moving by. The film—which needed to bring home almost $250 million to break even—opened this weekend to just $3.6 million, trailing behind Puss In Boots and the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Holdouts like Violent Night and the ever-popular Black Panther also managed to remain in the top 10 this week.
The full top 10 from the Christmas Weekend box office, via Rotten Tomatoes:
2. Puss In Boots: The Last Wish
3. Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody
4. Babylon
6. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
7. The Whale
9. The Menu
10. Strange World
27 Comments
This is the headline that broke me. Please stop churning out articles about Avatar, for my sanity I beg of you.
Shut the fuck up. It’s the biggest movie of the year directed by a master filmmaker so obviously they are going to cover it. You obviously have bad taste because you are a fan of ghost rider. Go watch the Nicolas Cage movie again you fucking dumbass.
Okay james keep telling yourself that
You love it? Great! You had a good time, and I’m happy for you.
Why ruin that good feeling by insulting everyone for the crime of (gasp!) disagreeing with you about a movie.Grow the fuck up, chief. It’s later than you think.
Here’s what is weird – almost every other media outlet has Avatar underperforming expectations. Io9 almost stands alone in declaring it a smash.
You think the original Avatar made one billion in only one week? This one will earn back its budget and then some.
Doesn’t AV Club do a weekend box office roundup every single week?
It’s already earned more in 12 days than Wokekanda Forever earned in six weeks. Not bad for a movie with a mostly white cast, and one that real-life indigenous groups are demanding people boycott, huh?
here’s the attention you wanted, now please go away
It’s a shame Babylon isn’t performing well. It doesn’t open in my country until late January and I’ll definitely still see it despite the mixed critical reaction, but I was hoping that it would at least do moderately well to help encourage studios to continue investing in mid-to-high budget films aimed exclusively at adult audiences with seemingly minimal studio interference and a strong singular artistic vision. I’ve enjoyed everything Chazelle has made so far, and the overblown excess of Babylon definitely intrigues me, so I hope the clout he has from Whiplash and La La Land (as well as First Man to a lesser degree) is able to hold over the disappointing performance of Babylon rather than him having to do ‘one for them’ as it were, to allow him to make whatever he wants to make next.
Prestige films are dead. No one wants to watch Hollywood jack itself off anymore.https://variety.com/vip/fabelmans-fumble-points-to-box-office-blues-for-prestige-films-1235447094/
I understand the weekend box office is a thing of interest to cover and that Avatar took the first spot—but I’m way more interested in what’s going on with Babylon, even though I won’t see that movie, either.Is it doing poorly because people aren’t interested in going to see a movie Hollywood made about making a movie? Or because of the competition? Maybe all? I don’t understand trends like this. I assume it’s more complicated when you’re dealing with a movie that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Zoomers hate prestige films.https://variety.com/vip/fabelmans-fumble-points-to-box-office-blues-for-prestige-films-1235447094/
Could it maybe be that young people aren’t a big fan of such movies because they don’t have the background to understand the references yet? It isn’t necessarily something about their generation. People said sweeping generalizations about GenXers and Millennials not being like their parents in regard to various preferences too, but as they aged they became less different.
The trend? The trend is the game has changed.Hollywood is at a loss to promote anything that isn’t a superhero or action movie. The old techniques to sell “adult” fare don’t seem to be working. The marketing template that sold lower-budget “adult fare” like The Greenbook is dead.Sure, ELVIS did well, but that was spectacle, and Elvis was superhero-ish in his way (why do you think he wore a cape?)When people like Scorcesse declared that superhero movies are killing cinema, they were kind of on point – they killed a certain kind of cinema. Just look at the Fablemans. Why did that fail? Because people won’t pay to watch a movie like that on the big screen anymore – it’s too TV-sized to attract a crowd. If people are going to get in their car, go to a crowded theater and pay a premium price, they want spectacle – the days of “intimate” cinema are probably over forever.
There is hardly a movie I’ve seen over the last couple of years where someone doesn’t pull out there phone and spend several minutes bothering, well at least me, or it goes off during a quiet point in the film. Now, I’m seeing it alone and usually only have a large drink but for a family to go see a movie with full concessions is a pricey event so they’re only going to go when it feels like an event.It’s not superhero films that have “killed Cinema” it’s streaming for making people realize they don’t need to see everything the moment it comes out in theaters and are actually showing up quicker and quicker sometimes still playing in the theaters at the same time.
Nothing about the trailers has been remotely intruiging for me. Never even piqued my interest to look up what the movie was about.
Babylon was so fucking bad. A massive pile of elephant diarrhea is the least stupid thing in the interminable opening orgy — literal and figurative — which then finds a way to last another two-and-a-half hours and say nothing interesting.
Avatar 2 is the best film of the year. Hollywood should reward Cameron for his masterpiece that teaches people how much marvel and star wars movies suck ass.
This is what you do with your free time?
And gets folks out to the cinema again.
So isn’t there a 3rd Avatar film coming soon? Have we been given any information on it yet?Also, I’m sorry that my impersonator has chosen to visit himself upon the AVClub.
Oh, it appears that a little of my question was answered on Gizmodo.https://gizmodo.com/deadpool-3-logan-hugh-jackman-wolverine-mcu-1849929122
I’m surprised to see Strange World on here given that it’s available for free on Disney Plus now.
It dropped over 80%, though; the only reason it showed up in the top 10 is because, outside of (arguably) Avatar: The Way of Water, every wide release had a horrible week.
There are a lot of reasons Babylon crashed. I think weather played a big part in it. Babylon is a period piece geared towards adults, and it’s release happened to coincide with one of the coldest Christmases on record alongside a devastating blizzard in a big part of the country. Adults without kids weren’t exactly tempted to leave their house to go see it, and adults with kids had Puss in Boots or Avatar to choose from. If it had released in the fall or in the summer it probably would have performed better. Opening anywhere near Avatar was never going to be good for any film. Early reviews were very mixed. It’s another 3 hour epic in a market saturated with them.
I don’t dig these really snobby reviews I see popping up online acting as if avatar 2 is making us all dumber, but…. That first movie was truly some mediocre stuff. Like I just can’t get behind a movie with a fuel supply named unobtanium. There’s that bad guy who looks and acts like he’s from a video game. I’ve heard the main complaint with this avatar 2 (from reviews and my brother in law who saw it today) is that there’s no real plot arc, like it’s 2 hours of catching up with the avatar family, they move to the ocean, and the last hour is fighting. Like that just sounds so dull and the visuals aren’t a compelling enough reason to check a movie out. Again I can’t stand the snobby reviews bashing this movie but the first avatar didn’t do it for me at all, and was reallllyy forgetable. But the backlash against the backlash i see in the comments here is annoying as fuck. Again this avatar thing ain’t for me, but, come on. I think you guys are overdoing it in defending james cameron and this multi movie franchise he just up and created.