Before its opening weekend, we noted at TheWrap that James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” was a shoo-in to become Hollywood’s highest-grossing film this year, but whether it would join the previous “Avatar” films in the 20th Century/Lightstorm franchise in the elite $2 billion box office club was much less certain.
After this opening weekend with an $88 million domestic launch and $345 million worldwide, it is looking more unlikely that “Fire and Ash” will get there even with the legs usually offered by the holiday season.
Theatrical sources and box office analysts told TheWrap that based on this opening weekend and assuming similar box office holds to what “Avatar: The Way of Water” earned in holdover weeks in 2022, early estimates for the final total of “Avatar: Fire and Ash” are somewhere in the range of $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion.
In that range, the film would rank ninth in the top 10 highest grossing films of all time before inflation adjustment, seated between the $1.69 billion of Disney/Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” and the $1.97 billion of Sony/Marvel Studios’ “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”
By any measure, that’s a big box office success.
But it is also a sign that even the majesty of Pandora and the Na’vi isn’t immune to the law of diminishing returns that has affected “Star Wars,” “Transformers,” “Fast & Furious” and every other tentpole franchise to emerge from Hollywood. And that will be something both Disney and Cameron will have to consider when, sometime months from now, they come to a decision on the future of “Avatar.”
Among all December releases, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” ranks fifth highest of all time. The record holder for the month — and third highest for any film — is “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in 2021 with $600 million.
After that comes “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” with $529 million in 2015, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” with $450.8 million in 2017 and “Avatar: The Way of Water” with $441.7 million in 2022.
Among these five films, “Avatar 3” has by far the lowest domestic opening of the bunch. “The Way of Water” opened to $134 million, and the other three films opened to more than $200 million, enabling them to overcome the near-total lack of interest in “Star Wars” in China and, in the case of “No Way Home,” the lack of any Chinese release at all.
From that $134 million opening, “The Way of Water” earned a $684 million domestic total, which equates to a 5.1x multiple. Assuming “Fire and Ash” has the same multiple, that equates to a $450 million domestic run, just above “A Minecraft Movie” and “Lilo & Stitch” at $423 million each for the top spot on the domestic charts.
But even that’s not a guarantee. While “The Way of Water” only had to deal with DreamWorks’ “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” in terms of major competition, “Fire and Ash” is sharing theaters with three new wide releases this weekend and another three more come Christmas Day. Among them are Angel’s “David,” Lionsgate’s “The Housemaid,” Paramount’s “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants” and A24’s “Marty Supreme.”
That’s fantastic for theaters, which seriously need that sort of variety to get the most out of the holidays. But for “Avatar 3,” it chips away at its box office ceiling even as it is expected to stay No. 1 well into the new year.
Over in China, “Fire and Ash” opened to $57.6 million, just a tick above the $56 million of “The Way of Water,” which grossed $246 million from that country three years ago. The good news is that the film has a 9.4/10 score from Chinese audiences on Maoyan, lower than the 9.7 for the historically popular “Zootopia 2” but on par with the first “Avatar” and above the 9.0 for “Way of Water.”
With the film performing on part with “Way of Water” in China, whether “Avatar 3” gets to $2 billion is essentially up to other international territories. In a few countries like France ($21.4 million opening) and Germany ($18 million), “Fire and Ash” posted a higher opening weekend than “Way of Water.” But that is likely attributable to the fact that “Way of Water” opened during the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which stretched out the legs of the film in those countries.
But in other countries there are some noticeable declines, such as the $13.6 million opening in South Korea that is down from $19.6 million for “Avatar 2.” In India, “Way of Water” opened to $19.1 million. But with stiff competition from the Hindi thriller “Dhurandhar,” which earned approximately $11 million and topped the charts in its third weekend, “Fire and Ash” opened to $9.2 million.
So barring some stronger-than-expected legs, the combination of increased global theatrical competition and its status as the third film in a franchise rather than a sequel with 13 years of hype will probably be enough to keep “Fire and Ash” from becoming the eighth $2 billion hit in box office history.
What does that mean for the future of “Avatar”? Nobody knows yet, and James Cameron is in no rush to give anyone an answer — he told TheWrap the odds of making “Avatar 4,” which Disney has dated for a 2029 release, are essentially up to the industry.
“We’re in a fluid scenario. Theatrical’s contracting, streaming is expanding. People’s habit patterns are changing. The teen demo consumes media differently than what we grew up with. And how much is it changing? Does theatrical contract to a point where it just stops and doesn’t get any smaller because we still value that, or does it continue to wither away?” Cameron said.
To put it more bluntly, Cameron said he won’t be making “Avatar 4” if it’s destined for a largely streaming release.
“I make movies for the big screen. They play well on the small screen because a good story is scalable. But the experience of the film in 3D and that unbroken three-hour engagement of the senses, that doesn’t translate to the streaming model,” he told TheWrap. “I want that to persist, but I’m also a realist. I’ll always be a storyteller. I’ll always have a gig. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that I get to continue to do what I’ve been doing.”
No matter what online critics say about the “cultural impact” of “Avatar,” Disney has developed plenty of ancillary revenue streams around the films, including merch, video games, and most notably, present and future theme park plans. The “Avatar” section of Animal Kingdom has become the most popular section of the Orlando theme park, and versions of those rides are expected to come to Disney’s California Adventure as part of a massive expansion and overhaul of the Disneyland Resort that will unfold in Anaheim over the next several years.
For that alone, Disney would surely love to have more “Avatar” films as it seeks to build out the long-term franchise potential of this series beyond any direct involvement Cameron may have. But as for Cameron himself, he’s expressed interest in other projects after decades of devotion to Pandora, most notably an adaptation of Charles Pellegrino’s acclaimed book “Ghosts of Hiroshima,” which explores the decades of radioactive devastation inflicted on Japan by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For now, this much we know: “Avatar: Fire and Ash” will push Disney past Warner Bros. and make it once again Hollywood’s top grossing studio for the year. Despite bombs like “Snow White,” “Elio” and “Tron: Ares,” the trio of “Avatar 3,” “Zootopia 2” and “Lilo & Stitch” alone will combine for more than $4 billion worldwide and push Disney’s 2025 global total to an estimated $5.8 billion.
Despite all the beatings it takes at the box office and in the public eye, Disney remains the load-bearing stick holding up the theatrical market.
What else we now know is that barring a miraculous twist, a Chinese film will become the year’s highest grossing film for the first time ever. With more than $2 billion grossed from Chinese audiences alone, “Ne Zha 2” is now the highest grossing animated film of all time and might hold on to that record for many years to come.
It’s hard to say if the unprecedented performance of this animated sequel will ever happen again, but the fact that a film was able to reach these heights from a single country’s audience shows the power of the Chinese box office when a film is so resonant that it can tap into its full potential, and the world should not be surprised if more $1 billion hits come from the Lunar New Year season in the future.
