With a projected opening of at minimum $150M, the long-awaited James Cameron sequel has become the highest-grossing movie ever. It is currently at $175M. However, rivals have a higher estimate of $200M.
The thing is that the pic is being compared against holiday fanboy titles and numbers should be taken with caution. Avatar isn’t a fanboy opening weekend movie. It’s one that will play and replay. The original 2009 title’s $77M opening was 95% more than the $150M opening.
Everybody is crazed about Avatar: The Way of Water. The unaided awareness indicator, which measures the number of people who mention their desire to see the title but are not prompted in a survey, is in the mid-30s to high 40s for all demos. This includes Latino, Hispanic and Black. These figures are impressive and worth the effort.
Yesterday was the announcement that Avatar: The Way of Water would be released in China. This is remarkable considering the fact that several blockbuster Hollywood movies have been canceled by the PRC during the pandemic. 3D and Imax fueled the original movie to gross more than $260M in China.
On Monday, advance tickets went on sale to Avatar: The Way of Water. The movie runs for 3 hours 12 minutes.
Avatar 2’s runtime won’t have an impact on Avatar 2’s sales. This is due to the fact that Avatar 2 will be released in the same amount of time as the rest of the year. Warner Bros. considered Shazam: Fury of the Gods to be a great counterprogramming film, but the studio decided that the DC sequel would be an event all its own, and sent it to March 17, when Imax screens are available.
No one knew what to expect when the first Avatar premiered. It was a bizarre, outlandish sci-fi film in which aliens were the main characters. The movie, which was similar to Cameron’s Titanic, earned $2.9 billion worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film ever. The pic was released in the United States at $785.2M, where it is the fourth highest grossing film at the box office.
Although Avatar 2 has been outsourced to many other studios, the original Avatar was still a huge success. Three films, Alvin and the Chipmunks (219.6M), Warner Bros. Sherlock Holmes ($209M), and the romantic comedy It’s Complicated ($112.7M) were able to be seen by wide audiences.
