Director James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water will finish its sixth weekend with just under $600 million at the domestic box office. The epic science-fiction sequel made an estimated $19.7 million this weekend, which is about as high as it was projected to, pushing its running domestic total to a hair under $598 million.
This is the seventh-biggest sixth weekend of all time, ahead of Spider-Man: No Way Home’s $14 million at the same time last year. The Way of Water hasn’t yet come close to that film’s $814 lifetime domestic haul, but recently overtook it at the global box office. The film is currently sitting at $2 billion globally, which makes it the biggest movie of the pandemic era, and the sixth-biggest film in history at the global box office. But to put this in context, The Way of Water still trails the first Avatar by nearly $1 billion.
Avatar is currently the highest-grossing movie in history at the worldwide box office, and even though The Way of Water likely won’t challenge its predecessor for the top position, it will probably outperform Avengers: Infinity War and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Similarly resilient was Universal’s release of Dreamworks’ Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which took second place in its fifth weekend of release. The film added $11.5 million this weekend, pushing its running domestic total to over $126 million. By comparison, the first Puss in Boots movie, which itself was a spinoff to the Shrek franchise, tapped out with an excellent $555 million globally more than a decade ago.
Universal also took the third spot with the holdover hit M3GAN. The well-received science-fiction thriller made $9.8 million in its third weekend, pushing its running domestic total to a solid $72 million and global haul to $127 million, against a reported budget of $12 million. A sequel is already in development.
The fourth and fifth spots were claimed by the newcomer Missing, a spiritual sequel to Sony’s 2018 computer screen movie Searching, and the feel-good drama A Man Called Otto, the second theatrical adaptation of the bestselling Swedish novel A Man Called Ove. Produced on a modest budget of $7 million, Missing made $9.3 million in its debut weekend. By comparison, Searching ended its domestic run with $26 million and made $75 million worldwide. A Man Called Otto, starring Tom Hanks in the lead role, has been largely successful at attracting the tough older demographic to theaters, as it topped $35 million domestically, and fell by just 34% from the last weekend.
Expect The Way of Water to surrender its top spot for the first time since its release next week, when director M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin debuts in theaters. You can watch our interview with Puss in Boots star Antonio Banderas here, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.