Proving naysayers wrong (at least for the time being), director James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water has shot past the coveted $1 billion mark at the global box office in just under two weeks of release — although it opened in a handful of international markets some days prior to its stateside debut. With more than $300 million domestically and approximately another $700 million from overseas markets, the long-awaited science-fiction sequel has now become the third film of 2022 to make more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office, and the sixth-fastest ever to hit that total.
This takes the film past the lifetime global tally of Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and puts it at the third spot behind Jurassic World Dominion ($1.003 billion) and Top Gun: Maverick ($1.488 billion) on the 2022 list. The Way of Water is overtaking Dominion as we speak, and is expected to finish as the top-performing film of 2022 when the dust settles (or the tide recedes). Adjusted projections put the film’s final tally between $1.6 billion and $1.9 billion.
While this would be considered a tremendous result on literally any other occasion, it’s still unclear if the film can hit the estimated break-even point Cameron has revealed it needs to meet before being considered profitable. The filmmaker previously stated that The Way of Water would need to finish as the third or fourth-biggest film of all time, which means the film would need to haul in approximately $2 billion at the global box office.
The Way of Water made $134 million in its domestic debut, which was better than the $77 million that the first Avatar opened with back in 2009. But famously, the original film had minimal drops in subsequent weekends, and it then went on to finish its theatrical run highest-grossing movie of all time. The film has made $785 million locally and over $2.9 billion worldwide thanks to several re-releases over the years. Its box office dominance was briefly interrupted by Avengers: Endgame in 2019, but Avatar eventually reclaimed to the top spot with another re-release.
The sequel catches up with Jake Sully and Neytiri over a decade after the first film and follows them as they flee their home and seek refuge with the water clans of Pandora as the war with humans persists. The positive word of mouth certainly helped make the film one of three films this year to reach $1 billion mark. With virtually no competition, at least until Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania drops in February, it will be interesting to see how far the film will go at the box office.
You can watch our interview with producer Jon Landau here, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.