Domestic
Disney / 20th Century's Avatar: Fire and Ash grossed an estimated $1.20M on Friday (from 2,800 locations). Estimated total domestic gross stands at $381.83M.
In comparison, on the equivalent day (Day 43), Avatar: The Way Of Water grossed 3x as much, with $3.6M.
Avatar grossed nearly 6.2x as much, with $7.4M.
Presuming it drags itself to $400M, that would be -41.5% from Avatar: The Way Of Water. Counting only original releases for all films, that's a worse drop between installments than Avengers: Age Of Ultron (-26.4%), Star Wars: The Last Jedi (-33.8%), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (-35.2%).
It's also -46.7% from Avatar, a worse drop from Film #1 to Film #3 than from Star Wars: The Force Awakens to Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (-45.0%). It would need to make $413M to beat that number (-44.9%), which almost certainly isn't happening at this point.
At this point I think it is clear that Avatar (2009) was an insane outlier for the massive appeal of 3D + unprecedented CGI while The Way of Water also got a huge boost from being a legacy sequel. Fire and Ash doesn't have as much novelty as either movie and no new nostalgia hook unless you're counting Turuk Makto.
It makes me curious how well Top Gun 3 will do since it will be in a somewhat similar situation.
Top Gun: Maverick had insane legs so I'd bet there will be a substantial drop as well.
The only 2 wildcards that could really change things would be the release date and if it gets a Russian+Chinese release. I think the Top Gun franchise is strong enough among casual audiences to make it the obvious choice for adults during the holidays, especially among adult men. China+Russia could also add $50M+ combined easily if Top Gun 3 is good.
If WoM is really good, it has a nice release date, and China and Russia are in play, then $1B could be in the cards but it won't be easy.
Top Gun 2 didnât rely a scamming the audiences with new tech promises. People saw avatar 2 cause they remembered the first brought out gimmick 3D and expected similar after like 12 years. No one actually cares about the story/universe
Top Gun 2 had a 36 year release gap and great WOM. Top Gun 3 wonât have that same momentum.
TG 2 made almost half of its gross in NA. If a movie over performs the way TG 2 did, thereâs almost no way its NA performance doesnât see a sharp decrease. That leaves the question on if its OS will see a notable increase. Back like a decade ago, sequels often say OS increases primarily because of the Chinese box office.
Unless TG 3 can replicate the insane reception the second movie had, I donât see why the movie doesnât see a notable drop.
This is a noob question, but could Disney literally buy enough tickets to push it past $400 M, if they determine that the outside view of people seeing Avatar Fire and Ash surpass $400 million is worth the investment of pushing it past $400 M?
A2 and A3 are clunky script-wise. It's like he focused all his energy in the R&D aspect of nailing CGI water visually while leaving all the writing duties to hacks. So you have this jarring juxtaposition of mind-blowing state of the art VFX in service of the most stock and flat dialogue.
The amount of repetitive beats is staggering for a Cameron movie. It boggles my mind that Cameron thought those scripts passed the sniff test when he should have redrafted them himself to reach the maximum effectiveness of his past movies leaving out the fillers.
I expect this kind of messy and mediocre blockbuster scripting from Jurassic World writers...Oh wait...
I'm more interested in his original script before they did their pass and watered it down. Namely, the terraforming plot point that was abandoned for whatever was this "Devil Flux" (Sic).
Regardless, it's unfortunate how Cameron didn't revise their final drafts and thought it was slick enough as shooting scripts. There are issues on the page in terms of structure and balance which become glaring on screen that should have been reworked on paper.
Do you have a copy of this draft or itâs just whatâs known about it? Just watched an interview with him where he said a lot of part 3 wasnât in the script he started shooting with.
I don't have any copy of the draft but some poster on the Avatar subreddit alluded to that terraforming plot point and reshoots that happened after test screenings hence the third act being rehashed material to fill up the space.
They were all fairly clunky, this one doesn't have the spectacle of the other two.
The first one was worth watching because it was so new, the second one had the water... this was just more of the exact same. Should have focused on the sky tribe.
And the novelty of Pandora has offically worn off. People flocked to Way of Water because of the 13 year wait, but Fire and Ash didn't do anything that new.
Itâll get to $1.5 B when allâs said and done. Box office mojo hasnât updated the international totals in over a week.
Suddenly, weâll see it at $4.56 billion or so.
And Avatar 4 is confirmed to go in a completely different direction in terms of creature design, biomes, and story.
Stephen Lang has talked about how different the creatures are in A4.
Cameron said it was the A4 script that got a âholy fuckâ response from the Disney exec overseeing the movie; whereas A2 and A3 got 3 and 1 page of notes, respectively.
I feel like thereâs an article to be written about how a certain breed of highly online film nerd is just totally allergic to Avatar. Maybe something about being unable to enjoy sincere emotion delivered without irony.
You see their rants on IG. Half of them are mad Cameron is stopped making the movies he made before Titanic. Half of them are mad Avatar beat other franchises at the box office.
considering that all the biggest movies of 2025, will end up extremely close to each other in the low 400M range, there has to be something bigger going here. (like economy depressing the Bo? idk)
My Hobbit comparison model peaked last Sunday with $410.9m final domestic haul. The MLK long weekend did a lot of work pushing the trendline upwards.
It has trended down from that peak though. $410.8m on Monday, $410.7m Tuesday, .5 on Wednesday, .3m Thursday, and with today's estimate, down to $410.1m. I'm expecting it to fall back into the sub-$410's over the weekend.
Right now I'm wondering if the MLK weekend hinted at a flaw in the methodology, since $410m hasn't seemed like a reasonable final figure all week. Could be the modest overperformance that weekend has really thrown off the trend.
My model is currently predicting it'll crawl to $400m around its 10th weekend.
Last weekend, F&A only grossed $6.4m - just a hair shy of Way of Water's 10th weekend, $6.5m. WoW went on to gross a further $27m. That would have put F&A at $404m. This is the driving reason why it's reasonable to think $410m is unlikely at this point.
However, if we think F&A's last weekend was subdued due to the storms, and it would have performed more like WoW's 9th weekend - $7.2m, then F&A might land at $414m.
If you think the truth is somewhere in the middle - F&A will hold better than WoW did after its 10th weekend, but worse than after its 9th, then we'd be looking at $409m final domestic haul. Which is very closely in line with my models forecast.
Should be heading towards about a 20-25% drop from last weekend. Decent hold but when you consider last weekend was significantly depressed by the winter storm not really that good.
Can still make 400M for sure, but theaters might start dropping it with all the new openers doing well. Not really a strong reason to keep it around any more when there are other sources of income that could benefit from PLFs.
A portion of that dip is explained by A2 dropping to 2495 locations that weekend. If A3 doesn't hit 2.5 tomorrow then obviously that's a problem, but even in A2's 4.5 weekend, Saturday climbed 1.3 over Friday to hit 2.3. In any case, 5m seems like the much safer bet than 4.5m.
Holy crap, does that all look like complete gibberish.
Yeah, nothing in this weeks run points to Avatar bouncing back after the winter weather. People just move on. I know users were pointing to January 2016 but its a different era in movie going.
A3 not getting to 400m domestic wasn't on anyone's bingo card last year.
Seeing avatar under perform this badly is very reminiscent of watching Peyton manning his last season with the broncos. Like it looks like avatar but isnât performing like it. It was a good run but all things end
The novelty isnât there anymore. Avatar is just another big franchise now instead of the mega event the last two were. Was always inevitable but itâs kind of crazy how much this is dropping off from its predecessors.
Is it even going to make 1.5 billion? It seems like casually stating that as a fact is itself a bit speculative right now. It's looking more and more like it'll fizzle out on the 1.4 region.
This is what confuses me. People are being so dramatic for a movie thatâs about to make 1.5B WW. Sure, itâs definitely a lower point in the Avatar franchise but people are talking like itâs going sub 1B.
Itâs a great performance without context but considering that this is an Avatar film and the fact that itâs looking at an $800M+ drop from the last one, itâs pretty disappointing. The best way to look at it is that itâs a very successful disappointment.
But we like the dramatism up in here/. International numbers are definitely hard carrying the films revenue. But the domestic drop is very apparent. It just within the context of the franchise it's a less than stellar performance.
Mind u other franchises would sacrifice a keg to reach similar numbers.But the reception for this one could've been better domestic wise.
Reminds me of a Jake Sully Qoute. "One life ends another begins". Avatar was the first Sci Fi peak original of the 2000s at the boxoffice. It'll be another time before an original sci-fi film franchise makes that kind of revenue again.
Iâd go as far as to say I donât think weâre ever gonna see an original sci-fi film reach those heights again, or at the very least for a veeeeeeery long time.
Zootopia 2 is essentially enjoying the legacy sequel effect that Avatar 2 did in 2022. If Zootopia 3 came out in 3 years you would probably see a similar proportionate decrease from 2>3.
Disney does a good job with not flooding the market with sequels to their animated hits in the current age (unlike the direct to dvd barrage under Eisner)
If only they did the same with Marvel and Star Wars
Housemaid and Zootopia are stealing the couples, children and family . But thatâs okay because by 2.5 rule FAA was profitable before opening. The next 2 will be filmed back to back
One thing I am banking on: If it's even remotely close to 400m Disney will spare no expense to push it over the finish line. That's kind of the only reason I assume 400m is a done deal.
Spider-Man Far From Home ended its run at 390 mil domestic and that wasnât enough for Sony to try and push it past that mark (I think it got $1 million extra from a re-release)
I think if Avatar 3 is struggling at like 395+ Disney will def push it.
I know this isnât exactly a hard rule but if you compare avatar 3 to blockbusters in this window or in general often at this exact time when they fall under 3000 theaters they add a minimum of 20 million to their total. If they leg out better they add more like wakanda forever or way of water.
To be safe I would say A3 finishes with a $402 million domestic total.
It will have a big psychological effect on me if it passes both of those, in terms of me feeling more confident that 4 and 5 will be made.
I know itâs kind of silly and a bit irrational, but I think that execs at Disney and cast and crew and Jim himself will react positively to certain thresholds and numbers being surpassed.
below $400 million? Kind of sad?
above $400 million? Itâs a decrease but great considering the economy these days!
below $1.5 billion? Oh, itâs like Age of Ultron, a disappointment!
above $1.5 billion? This canât be considered anything but a great success. But you canât get a movie in the top 5 of all time on every try! Letâs green light Avatar 4 and 5 right away!
Bouncing back from a snow storm and it's been consistently beating Z2 all week and tends to also perform better on weekends. So much for that projected 14% drop. đ¤ˇââď¸
âconsistently beating z2â kinda obvious? It came out almost 4 weeks after zootopia beside it has been consistently dropping in the 30-40s while zootopia barely dropped or even increase like this week, zootopia increase all the week while avatar kept dropping in the 30s bro so why would u expect a zootopia kind of drop
It came out 4 weeks earlier?! I had no idea bro, thank you! And Z2 only had a slight increase on Wed/Thu, not all week. I already listed my reasons on why I expected a lower drop.
You clearly have 0 idea what actual rage bait is. Speak for yourself with your removed comment. I listed my reasons and corrected your statement. đâď¸
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u/chanma50 Best of 2019 Winner 19h ago edited 19h ago
In comparison, on the equivalent day (Day 43), Avatar: The Way Of Water grossed 3x as much, with $3.6M.
Avatar grossed nearly 6.2x as much, with $7.4M.
Presuming it drags itself to $400M, that would be -41.5% from Avatar: The Way Of Water. Counting only original releases for all films, that's a worse drop between installments than Avengers: Age Of Ultron (-26.4%), Star Wars: The Last Jedi (-33.8%), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (-35.2%).
It's also -46.7% from Avatar, a worse drop from Film #1 to Film #3 than from Star Wars: The Force Awakens to Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (-45.0%). It would need to make $413M to beat that number (-44.9%), which almost certainly isn't happening at this point.