The global opening weekend box office for Avatar: The Way of Water will place it in the Top 10 chart for 2022. The film is the long-awaited sequel to James Cameron's 2009 mega-hit Avatar, which quickly rose to become the highest-grossing film of all time off the back of its spectacular CGI and world-building. It features the return of lead characters Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and picks up with their lives a decade later, where they are now parents who must defend their home, Pandora, against more human invaders.
Per Deadline, the domestic box office opening weekend for Avatar: The Way of Water is expected to close with a total of $150 million, which is slightly lower than projected. However, this will bring its worldwide opening total projections to over $410 million. This massive take would automatically place it at number 10 on the global box office chart for 2022, sandwiched between Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore at number 11 and the Chinese sci-fi comedy Moon Man at number nine.
What Avatar: The Way of Water's Total Box Office Could Look Like
Given how easily it bested most other movies this year, Avatar: The Way of Water is on a path to trounce most of the competition, which includes franchise blockbusters like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Jurassic World Dominion. This is good news for the film, which comes with a price tag of about $400 million before its massive publicity and advertising campaign is even factored in. According to Cameron himself, the project will need to be one of the highest-grossing films of all time to just break even, so there is a lot of pressure, especially as the film's performance will determine the future of its promised three sequels, the first of which is set to premiere on December 20, 2024.
Despite opening lower than projections, pundits are confident that the film's box office will continue slow and steady thanks to the fact that customers are more inclined to purchase tickets for the film premium formats. Just like the original hit Avatar, The Way of Water's box office will be bolstered by IMAX and 3D tickets. Its prodigious run time of three hours and 12 minutes is also preventing as many screenings from being run in each theater per day, so while the grosses each weekend may be lower than expected, they will likely stay consistent and add up to a spectacular number.
However, it may not be the case that Avatar: The Way of Water will be able to become the number one highest-grossing film of the year. Because of its December 16 release date, it only has two weeks before the end of the year to compete with some record-breaking hits like the legacy sequel Top Gun: Maverick. That film is currently the highest-grossing title of the year with $1.49 billion, which would require Avatar to make the same amount or higher over the next two weekends in order to match that total before New Year's, which seems entirely unlikely.
Source: Deadline
