‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’ Nearly Doubles Avatar’s Opening Box Office Numbers

Released in 2009, James Cameron’s “Avatar” still remains as the highest grossing film of all time. For the first time ever, audiences were amazed at Cameron’s world of Pandora with groundbreaking ‘motion-capture’ technology & never before seen 3D visuals. After the mammoth success of “Avatar,” cinema lovers all around the world flocked to the theaters when the sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water” was finally released this Friday, 13 years after the original. 

“Avatar: The Way of Water” opened with a whopping $441.7 Million in worldwide collections, and it is already the 10^th highest grossing film of this year worldwide. This is the second highest worldwide opening of this year, only behind “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”($452 Million). “Avatar: The Way of Water” was released in 4202 theaters, 12000 screens including 407 IMAX screens in the U.S., and opened at $134.1 Million in domestic box office collections. As the Avatar franchise is intended for big screen experience, cinephiles around the world preferred to watch this epic underwater spectacle on premium screens. Thus 66% of $441 Million worldwide collection, and $48.8 Million out of $134.1 Million domestic collection are from IMAX screens. After a really long time, a Hollywood blockbuster was allowed to release in Mainland China, and the film collected $57 Million, out of which $15.8 Million (27% of total collection) was from 735 IMAX screens. 

The film’s $134 Million domestic opening is the 37^th best opening weekend of all time and 5^th best opening of 2022. “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” leads the chart, closely followed by another Marvel tenpole “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”.

Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” was released with no real competition in the domestic box office, and easily topped the weekend chart, & is probably going to stay at No. 1 spot for a really long time. Marvel’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” did manage to secure the 2^nd spot but couldn’t give any competition as its theatrical run is almost coming to an end. Animated movie “Strange World” and Oscar seeking “The Menu” managed to get into the top 5 in this weekend’s rankings.

In India, “Avatar: The Way of Water” saw massive ticket sales, raking in 41 crores of Nett collection on the opening day. This is the 2^nd highest opening day collection for a Hollywood movie in India. The 2^nd and 3^rd day brought in 42 crores, and 46 crores respectively, making it a stunning 129 crores of total opening weekend collection in India.

Out of all the December releases in the U.S, “Avatar: The Way of Water” has the 6^th highest opening of all time. Last December’s “Spider-Man No Way Home” leads the chart, followed by the Disney era Star Wars films.

If we observe the opening weekend numbers of all James Cameron films, we will find “Avatar: The way of water” topping the list even after the old films are adjusted for inflation.

From all the numbers I have presented in front of you so far, it seems like “Avatar: The Way of Water” is a major hit at the box office. But there’s more than meets the eye. Before any movie releases (especially the big budget ones), opening weekend box office numbers are projected by various industry experts and outlets, with the help of advanced ticket booking data & various other technical aspects. They have been doing this for decades and most of the time they are dead accurate or at the very least close to the actual numbers. “Avatar: The Way of Water” reportedly has a budget of somewhere between $350 Million to $400 Million (not including advertising and marketing expenses). Some sources even reported the budget to be around $460 Million, which makes it the most expensive film of all time. This movie has to make almost a billion dollars to just break even. Having most of the screenings in 3D, a strongly recognized IP, and with no real competition at the box office, industry experts were projecting a $200 Million domestic opening. The more modest projections were somewhere between $150 Million to $175 Million. But “Avatar: The Way of Water” could not even reach that number and ended up with just $134 Million. In China, where the movie was projected to open at $100 Million, but opened with just $57 Million. The Worldwide opening is $441 Million, where it was $550 Million when initially projected.

The reasons for it to fail the industry estimates might have to do with the fact that the film is very long (3 hours 12 minutes to be exact), and this restricts how many shows you can screen in a given day. Another reason might be that people are very choosy about the best seats at the biggest possible screen for this particular visual masterpiece film. That’s why they would rather wait than watch it in any random theater. The china numbers came in low might have to do with the fact that Covid-19 is again surging in that country. So, does this mean “Avatar: The Way of Water” is a box office failure? Absolutely not!! We think the opening is low because we are used to huge box office openings of Marvel films several times each year. But we have to keep in mind that Marvel movies are usually front loaded because of spoiler heavy nature. If we take the most recent example of “Top Gun Maverick, it’s not even in the top 5 list of best openings of this year, yet it is the highest grossing film of 2022. Whereas none of those Marvel films could reach the billion-dollar mark even with such a strong opening. 

Non-Marvel blockbusters usually have strong legs. If we see the first “Avatar,” it opened with only $77 Million, but it didn’t fall sharply like the Marvel films and now it is the highest grossing film of all time. We are living in a time where even the biggest of movies fall 55%-65% on their second weekend, but the hold of “Avatar” was something that was never witnessed before and it was No.1 film at the domestic box office for 7 weeks in a row. 

Now if we see the first Friday to Saturday drop for “Avatar: The Way of Water,” it dropped only 16%, “Top Gun Maverick” dropped only 27%, whereas blockbusters released in December, like the Star Wars sequel trilogy, dropped significantly higher.

“Avatar” opened with only $77 Million but went on to become the highest grossing film of all time, and Cameron’s “Titanic” opened with just $28 Million, but it became the highest grossing movie at that time. “Avatar: The Way of Water” will have no real competition till “Ant Man Quantum Mania” comes out in February. Also, with the Christmas & New Year holidays coming, “Avatar: The Way of Water” is showing similar strong legs and a long journey at the box office like “Avatar” and “Titanic.” Do I suggest another $2 Billion collection? No!! It’s too early to tell, but I do believe in the saying “Never bet against Cameron.”

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