{"id":370498,"date":"2025-12-25T07:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T07:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/370498\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T07:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T07:23:10","slug":"avatar-3-tops-450m-as-history-looks-to-repeat-itself-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/370498\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Avatar 3’ Tops $450M as History Looks To Repeat Itself… Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThis can\u2019t possibly be happening again, can it? No, it\u2019s just the pre-holiday rush, plus those who missed out due to the weekend snowstorm… right?
You don\u2019t suppose…?\u201d \u2014 Scott Mendelson, December 23, 2009<\/a><\/p>\n

(as you hit play on James Horner\u2019s \u201cUnable to Stay, Unwilling to Leave\u201d<\/a>)<\/p>\n

James Cameron\u2019s Avatar: Fire and Ash earned $13.3 million on Monday, declining 46% from its $24.26 million Sunday gross and then followed that up with a $16.5 million (+24%) Tuesday gross. That put James Cameron\u2019s latest sci-fi actioner at $119 million in five days, thanks to a smaller Sunday-to-Monday drop (-55% for a $16 million day four gross) but and a larger Monday-to-Tuesday jump than Avatar: The Way of Water (-55% and $16 million on Monday and then +125% and $18.3 million on Tuesday in 2022). That\u2019s also the second-biggest Tuesday gross of 2025, behind\u00a0Superman\u00a0($17.5 million, coming off a $125 million opening weekend), and already positions the film at 1.33x its\u00a0Fri-Sun opening weekend.<\/p>\n

It has earned 1.33x its $89 million Fri-Sun opening weekend, compared to 1.42x for Avatar but 1.25x for The Way of Water. Noting the ups and downs of when Christmas Eve and Christmas Day fell each year, it\u2019s currently leggier than the vast majority of big year-end tentpoles that opened on a Friday (sorry to King Kong and Frodo Baggins) just before Christmas. The only such leggier pre-Christmas tentpoles since 2009 are\/were the Aquaman movies (which had Christmas Day fall upon, respectively, day five in 2018 and day four in 2023) and the stupidly leggy even by holiday standards Mufasa: The Lion King (1.4x its $35 million debut in 2024 before legging out to $255 million domestically).<\/p>\n

20th Century Studios\u2019 Avatar 3 concluded its first full week of worldwide play with a $450 million worldwide cume, after earning $50.7 million on Monday and $50.8 million on Tuesday. That includes (counting Wednesday), including a decent (if not superlative by Pandora-ian standards) $72 million five-day total in China. It should pass $500 million worldwide late tonight or early tomorrow. Of note, Fire and Ash opened nearly identically in North America (sans inflation) to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey ($84 million in 2012) but then more-than-doubled that film\u2019s respective Tuesday gross. Also, its first Tuesday was 47% below that of Spider-Man: No Way Home ($33 million in 2021), coming off a 66% smaller opening weekend ($260 million).<\/p>\n

Leave a comment<\/a><\/p>\n

Optimistically speaking, legs like\u00a0The Way of Water\u00a0from this point ($685 million from a $169 million five-day total) \u201conly\u201d get Fire and Ash to $481 million domestically. Less optimistically, a from-here-on-out domestic multiplier like Aquaman ($335 million from $105 million five-day cume) gets Avatar 3 to around $377 million. However, with $331 million overseas thus far, a concurrent continued 26\/74 domestic\/overseas split would then give it a mere $1.423 billion worldwide finish. More optimistically, a 26\/74 split for $481 million domestic would total $1.815 billion globally. While I\u2019m not *quite* ready to declare \u201cThat sonovabitch, he did it again,\u201d that may just be a distrust of my own optimism. Naw, fuck this\u2026 I\u2019m calling it.<\/p>\n

Share<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis can\u2019t possibly be happening again, can it? No, it\u2019s just the pre-holiday rush, plus those who missed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-370498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}