Avatar: The Way of Water — a movie starring a white boy with dreads named Spider, a space whale, and Sigourney Weaver as a blue teenage girl — is about to become the highest-grossing movie of 2022. That sonuvabitch Cameron has done it again.
The Avatar sequel is up to $1.4 billion at the worldwide box office after being released in the U.S. on December 16th, including $444 million domestic and $956 million internationally. “That puts Disney’s film on track to surpass the $1.49 billion in sales for Paramount Global’s Top Gun: Maverick, the current highest-grossing film released in 2022,” according to Bloomberg. “The Tom Cruise fighter-jet movie made the most money at domestic theaters within the year, while The Way of Water tops it internationally.” (It’s worth noting that unlike Avatar: The Way of Water, Top Gun: Maverick was not released in China, one of the biggest markets in the world.)
The weekend performance demonstrates the unusual staying power of the Avatar franchise. The Way of Water didn’t even have one of the top three domestic openings of 2022. Its 2009 predecessor Avatar also started out slowly, but ultimately sold a record $2.92 billion worth of tickets… The Way of Water is probably on course to at least break even financially, an accomplishment given its high production costs. That bodes well for a series of sequels Disney has planned for the franchise through 2028.
This can only end one way: Tom Cruise challenging a mighty Ikran to a race.
(Via Bloomberg)