Avatar: The Way of Water, the most recent blockbuster from James Cameron, has now raked in $1 billion worldwide. The movie’s story follows up ten years after the events of the first Avatar, placing Sam Worthington’s character Jake Sully and his family among the Na’vi. Jake, Neytiri, and their kids fled his adoptive tribe and sought safety with the Metkayina clan, the reef people of Pandora. Jake is alone on the seas, battling a significant human invasion surge while frantically attempting to protect his family.
According to a Variety report, Avatar: The Way of Water has made $1 billion in foreign box office revenue as it is still playing in theatres. The domestic box office continues to be quite strong; in fact, it recently exceeded Black Panther: Wakanda Forever with $440 million, which is not surprising given that Avatar 2 earned half a billion dollars in just one week in theatres throughout the world. Avatar: The Way of Water might surpass the $2 billion mark in overall earnings if it keeps going in the same direction, which would be another significant accomplishment for Cameron and the cast.
What the Future of Avatar’s Box Office Means
Based on its earnings, Avatar: The Way of Water is likely to rank in the top ten highest-grossing movies of all time. In addition to its dominance in theatres, it has already outperformed Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1.403 billion) and Disney’s Frozen II ($1.45 billion). Its earnings also don’t appear to be slowing down. The Avatar sequel intends to eventually surpass Top Gun: Maverick at the box office and take the title of the highest-grossing movie released in 2022, even if it doesn’t succeed in doing so in the year 2022 itself. If the movie maintains its present course, it might easily break the top 10 list of all-time box office grosses.
Since Cameron insisted that the company shoot Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 back-to-back to prevent Sully’s children from growing up too quickly, Avatar: The Way of Water is a dangerous movie to produce. As a result, the success of Avatar: The Way of Water demonstrated that the Avatar franchise could still afford to take some significant risks. Of course, there are issues with it. Avatar 2 is currently sitting at $1.48 billion worldwide, so there is still some ground to cover to meet Cameron’s goals, which is possible. Initially, Cameron overstated the success of Avatar 2’s box office potential, saying that it would bring in $2 billion (and has since corrected the number to $1.5 billion).
Avatar: The Way of Water needs to break box office records to justify the costly production, which has now reached its breakeven point, given that there are three more Avatar sequels in the works. Disney does, however, own the top-grossing movies Avatar ($2.922 billion), Avengers: Endgame ($2.797 billion), Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens ($2.069 billion), and Avengers: Infinity War ($2.048 billion), as well as a stake in Titanic ($2.201 billion), so the company anticipates that Cameron’s most recent film will achieve comparable heights to justify their investment. The popularity of Avatar: The Way of Water suggests that Avatar 6 and 7 may one day reach theatres. Director James Cameron has compared the Avatar sequels to episodic TV.