Avatar: The Way Of Water led the domestic weekend box office charts for the fourth consecutive time with an estimated $45 million in earnings between Friday and Sunday, according to Box Office Mojo, as the movie’s worldwide revenue surpasses $1.7 billion and inches towards director James Cameron’s $2 billion target—making it one of the most lucrative films of all time.
Disney’s Avatar: The Way Of Water—Cameron’s sequel to the highest-grossing film of all time—has earned a total of $516.8 million domestically along with $1.19 billion in international earnings, making it the seventh highest-grossing film of all time.
The Avatar sequel crossed the $1.5 billion worldwide earnings mark on Thursday, vaulting ahead of Top Gun: Maverick to become the highest-grossing film released in 2022 (the Top Gun sequel has earned $1.48 billion worldwide).
The Way Of Water vaulted ahead of Jurassic World and Disney’s 2019 Lion King remake —which drop to the eighth and ninth spots respectively with total global earnings of more than $1.6 billion each—this weekend, but it still trails Spider-Man: No Way Home (which grossed $1.9 billion).
After slightly leading The Way Of Water on Friday, Universal’s horror film M3GAN came in second at the U.S. box office this weekend, raking in $30.2 million.
$2.92 billion. That is the total worldwide box office earnings for the original Avatar, which was released in 2009, making it the highest-grossing film of all time according to Box Office Mojo.
After a slower-than-expected opening last month, Avatar: The Way Of Water has managed to maintain strong momentum at the box office, with strong performances during its second, third and now fourth weeks. In an interview on Friday, Cameron said he expected the film to reach $2 billion in global box office earnings “in the next few days” and cross its “breakeven” point.
The Avatar sequel is one of the most expensive films ever made, with a budget estimated at $350 million or more, and Cameron had said it would need to become one of the highest-grossing films of all time to simply break even. The Way Of Water’s steep budget, however, also includes the cost of filming a third Avatar movie and developing the scripts for a fourth and fifth film which could make the latter films in the series more profitable.
