Of course, the dominant force at the box office is
Avatar: The Way of Water which is up 0.2% from last weekend for a third weekend of $63.4 million. That gives
The Way of Water the fourth best third weekend of all time, and the $422 million cume (and with Monday estimates that’s $441 million) means it has already grossed over three times its opening weekend and is ahead of
Top Gun: Maverick at the same point in its release ($395 million). Internationally the film grew 4% over last weekend, bumping the global cume to $1.397 billion million. The last time we saw legs like this on a massive winter blockbuster was, appropriately enough, 13 years ago with the release of the first
Avatar.
Whether or not the spectacular holds continue, the film has already made a killing, and with the Monday estimates it has passed
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s $440 million domestic cume to become the second highest domestic grosser of 2022. More impressively,
The Way of Water is also just days off from becoming 2022’s highest grossing film worldwide, surpassing
Top Gun: Maverick’s $1.49 billion cume. The China release helps here, being the film’s largest international market with $153 million so far, while
Maverick never got a release in the Middle Kingdom. Even without China, though,
Avatar 2 would still be on track to be the year’s topper. It has already broken pandemic-era records in many markets (notably France, its second biggest international market with $95.1 million so far) after less than three weeks of its release, with considerable room for further growth as it shows no sign of slowing down.