Director James Cameron’s long-awaited Avatar: The Way of Water came in lower than anticipated in its debut weekend at the domestic box office, but there’s no reason to sound the alarms just yet. With solid reviews, zero competition and Cameron’s track record, all signs point to a strong performance over the holiday season.
Produced on a reported budget of $400 million, The Way of Water made an estimated $134 million in its opening weekend at the domestic box office. This is lower than the $150 million to $175 million range that it was projected to open in, although it’s a solid enough result for a three-hour-plus movie that was never expected to be front-loaded in the first place.
The Way of Water fell short of the opening weekend totals posted by other major 2022 releases such as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($187 million) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ($181 million), Jurassic World Dominion ($145 million) and Thor: Love and Thunder ($144 million). It’s neck-and-neck with The Batman ($134 million), and somewhat significantly, pacing ahead of Top Gun: Maverick ($126 million), which remains the year’s biggest film with nearly $720 million domestically and $1.49 billion worldwide. Don’t be surprised if The Way of Water posts similar totals.
But the film will have to surpass Maverick by quite a margin to be considered a success. By Cameron’s own admission, The Way of Water would need to finish as “the third or fourth biggest” film in history to break even, meaning that anything under $2 billion globally will be considered an underperformance. But the filmmaker has a history of proving himself at the box office; the first Avatar famously opened with just $77 million back in 2009, but went on to become the highest-grossing film in history, with $760 million at the domestic box office and $2.9 billion worldwide.
The number two spot this weekend was claimed by another sequel — Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The superhero film added an estimated $5.3 million in its sixth weekend (after five weekends at number one), taking its running domestic total to just under $420 million. Universal’s action comedy Violent Night took the third spot with an estimated $5 million, pushing its running domestic total to just under $35 million — a solid result for a niche film produced on a budget of $20 million.
The fourth and fifth spots were claimed by Disney’s animation bomb Strange World, which has now made a little over $33 million domestically against a reported budget of $180 million, and Searchlight’s dark comedy The Menu, which added $1.6 million this weekend for a running domestic total of $32 million.
Expect The Way of Water to stay afloat for the next several weeks, at least until Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania arrives in a couple of months. You can watch our interview with Cameron here, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.