Avatar: The Way of Water opens big, but not nearly as big as expected.
25 years ago this weekend, James Cameron's much delayed, much discussed, extremely expensive historical romance Titanic opened. Reviews were fantastic, but the film did only moderate business that first weekend. It did beat the competing opening, the James Bond flick Tomorrow Never Dies, but made about $4 million less than Scream 2 had done the weekend before. Of course, Titanic would stay #1 all the way until April, and end its run as the highest-grossing film of all time. Almost exactly 12 years later, Cameron's next feature film, Avatar, had a decent opening, but given all the hype, it could be seen as a bit of a disappointment. Avatar would stay #1 until February, and ultimately take the title of #1 film of all time away from Titanic.
Now, 13 years after Avatar, we have to wonder if history is about to repeat itself for another James Cameron film. Avatar: The Way of Water arrived on a wave of hype and rapturous reviews, but the eye-popping sci-fi epic could only come up with $134.1 million this weekend. To be sure, that's a strong opening, and any number of films this year would have been thrilled with that number being their final gross, but for those who thought that Water might very well challenge Top Gun: Maverick for the top spot for the year, an opening that's on par with The Batman and roughly $10 million less than Thor: Love and Thunder and Jurassic World: Dominion has to be a bit of a disappointment. That said, Maverick opened to even less than Water did, and while January 2023 doesn't look like the wasteland January 2022 was, it's not out of the question that Avatar could rule the box office all the way to the arrival of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in February.
With the box office having largely been running on fumes since Thanksgiving, it's not too surprising that nothing finished remotely close to Avatar this weekend. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was a distant #2, taking in $5.4 million to bring its total to $418.9 million, enough to pull past Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to become the second-highest grosser of 2022. Whether it will get to stay at #2 largely depends on just how strong Avatar's legs will be in the coming weeks.
Violent Night continues its decent run, pulling another $5.1 million from underneath the tree, to bring its total to $35 million. It seems likely to pass Krampus's $42.7 million final, and if it can do well during the lucrative post-Christmas week, it could finish as high as $50 million, something that should make the Universal execs who greenlighted it very merry indeed.
Strange World remains in the Top 5 largely by default, taking in $2.2 million for a total of $33.8 million. With a new animated film arriving in the marketplace, plus its impending release onto Disney+, expect even those modest numbers to plunge very soon.
The Menu was served up as the only other film to hit $1 million at the box office this weekend, taking in $1.6 million for a total of $32.1 million.
Two Oscar bait titles, Devotion and The Fabelmans, came in 6th and 7th. Current grosses stand at $18.6 million and $8.7 million. While Devotion might be able to land some technical nominations, The Fabelmans, poor grosses aside, seems likely to score a number of major Oscar nominations.
Grosses were so bad in the lower part of the chart that Fathom's special holiday showings of It's a Wonderful Life came in 8th. To be fair, it's pretty impressive that a 1946 movie that has been seen on TV frequently during this time for decades can make over $0.7 million from a limited number of screenings, but even making that much shouldn't put it in the Top 10 a week before Christmas.
Rounding out the Top 10 was the long-running Black Adam, which celebrated what will likely be its final week on the charts by learning that its sequel has officially been shelved, and I Heard the Bells, the holiday-themed biopic of Christian poet Henry Wardsworth Longfellow. Overall grosses for the two titles stands at $167.7 million and $5 million.
While Avatar will likely win Christmas weekend, there are three new arrivals that could make it a much merrier weekend and beyond for theater owners. Opening today is Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. It's a bit surprising that this franchise is being revived, as it's been 11 years since the first Puss in Boots opened, meaning that pretty much every kid who went to see it is at least in high school now. But the character has remained alive via a series of Netflix shows, and as the only non-Strange World family movie in theaters over the long Christmas week, this seems poised to do at least decent business. Arriving Friday is the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody, starring the relatively unknown Naomi Ackie as the iconic and tragic singer. Ackie has not factored at all in the Oscar conversation so far, but if the film does well, that could change. Speaking of Oscars, Damien Chazelle's Hollywood-in-the-20s epic Babylon, starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robie, also opens then. The hard-R comedy-drama probably won't attract the family crowds the way Avatar, Puss, and Dance will, but it easily has the most star power of any film out right now, which has to be good to sell a few tickets. Could any of them end up challenging Avatar? We'll find out next week.
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