Avatar: The Way of Water crosses $1 billion in box office collections

All concerns about the success of Avatar: The Way of Water have been addressed as the film has picked up a lot of pace at the worldwide box office. While Avatar 2 has held strong at the domestic box office, it has completely blown through the roof overseas.

With a 78% fresh critics score and 92% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, a lot of good word of mouth is resulting in Avatar: The Way of Water’s success as it has crossed the $1 billion mark already. And it is among the five fastest movies to enter the Billion Dollar club.

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Box office run of Avatar: The Way of Water so far

Jake Sully's family in Avatar: The Way of Water (Image via 20th Century Studios)

Avatar 2 opened with $134 million domestically and held pretty strong in its second weekend with only a 52.8% drop. It brought in $63.3 million, but this weekend was supposed to be counted as a four-day weekend from December 23 to 26 because of Monday’s holiday. So with the Monday numbers, the film brought in $95 million.

Now just 12 days after its release, the domestic box office stands at around $300 million, and the international total is around $700 million (exact numbers are yet to come in). All in all, Avatar: The Way of Water has passed $1 billion in 12 days, joining the likes of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Star Wars: The Force Awakens on the record.

The fastest films to $1 billion (Image via Box Office Mojo)

It is only behind Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War which took five and 11 days, respectively, to enter the Billion Dollar club. While No Way Home and The Force Awakens were helped by their domestic numbers, Avatar 2 has achieved this feat due to its performance in the international market.

Its increased earnings in the second weekend show that the first weekend was bogged down by the FIFA World Cup and the lack of premium theater screens worldwide. Many fans were either busy watching the World Cup finals or were waiting to watch The Way of Water on the best screen and in the best seats possible on the second weekend.

So, that’s one reason why all The Way of Water theater screens are flooding right now. Another reason for its quick Billion Dollar campaign is its release in China. Despite COVID haunting the country, Avatar 2 has managed to pull in $104 million from China till now, which in turn helped it reach $1 billion much faster than it would have.

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The final projections of Avatar: The Way of Water

Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water (Image via Sportskeeda)

Avatar 2 was produced on a $460 million production budget. So, it needed $1 billion to break even. Now, everything that the film makes will mark as profit for Disney. It has already become the second highest-grossing film of 2022 by beating Jurassic World: Dominion. With the pace it is moving forward, it will surely beat Top Gun: Maverick ($1.488 billion) to become the biggest film of 2022.

In fact, it will surely take down Furious 7 ($1.515 billion) and The Avengers ($1.518 billion) and claim the 8th spot. But it also has a chance to go past The Lion King ($1.663 billion) and Jurassic World ($1.671 billion) and take the spot of the 6th biggest film of all time.

Avengers: Infinity War and Spider-Man: No Way Home (Image via Marvel)

Touching the likes of Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.917 billion), Avengers: Infinity War ($2.048 billion), or Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($2.069 billion) would be tricky for Avatar: The Way of Water because it hasn’t had the biggest performance domestically.

But since it faces no competition from any other films in the next two months, Avatar 2 could end up somewhere around 1.7-$1.8 billion. The next weekend’s performance would provide more clarity for its total. Still, the movie has done enough to generate hype for Avatar 3, at the very least.

Avatar: The Seed Bearer arrives in theaters on December 20, 2024.