{"id":264050,"date":"2026-01-26T01:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T01:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/264050\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T01:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T01:56:07","slug":"mercy-topples-avatar-after-weeks-long-reign-at-u-s-box-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/264050\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Mercy’ topples ‘Avatar’ after weeks-long reign at U.S. box office"},"content":{"rendered":"

Avatar: Fire and Ash<\/a>‘s seemingly indomitable reign at the domestic box office<\/a> has finally come to an end. But the weekend’s numbers show that it isn’t because of this new contender’s strength, but rather Fire and Ash’s weakness.\n<\/p>\n

Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson’s dystopic thriller Mercy<\/a> finally became the title to topple James Cameron’s fantasy threequel from the No. 1 spot, after several stepped up and tried over the past six weeks. Mercy scored the No. 1 spot on the domestic charts this weekend with a $11.2 million opening figure, easily outpacing Fire and Ash’s $7 million week-six take, per Comscore.\n<\/p>\n

Avatar still held on to No. 1 globally, however, with a $35 million take, while Mercy came in at No. 4 with $22.8 million.\n<\/p>\n

After nearly two months of gangbusters business at the box office, driven by the premieres of some of 2025’s highest-earning films, from Wicked: For Good to Zootopia 2 to Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, this weekend’s cumulative top 10 domestic gross of just over $44 million represents a marked slump. Compare that figure to the weekend beginning with Fire and Ash’s Dec. 19 premiere, in which the top 10 cumulative exceeded $175 million.\n<\/p>\n

Still from ‘Zootopia 2’.<\/p>\n

DISNEY<\/p>\n

Mercy’s $11.2 domestic premiere, meanwhile, doesn’t instill confidence that the film will recoup its estimated $60 million budget by the end of its theatrical run. In other words, Fire and Ash lost its foothold atop the box office not because a powerful opponent challenged the film and won, but because it had so weakened after six weeks in release that a meager $7 million take would have been enough for almost any new release to vault over.\n<\/p>\n

That isn’t to say Fire and Ash’s box office performance has been weak overall. The film has grossed $378.4 million domestically and nearly $1.4 billion abroad so far, placing it within the upper echelons of the highest-grossing films released last year. But as discussed in last week’s box office report<\/a>, Fire and Ash is significantly underperforming compared with its predecessors, 2009’s Avatar and 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water.\n<\/p>\n

The rest of the weekend’s box office leaderboards are mixed bags, comprised of new arthouse titles, blockbuster holdovers from 2025, re-releases, and more.\n<\/p>\n

In the No. 3 spot domestically is Zootopia 2, which earned $5.7 million in its ninth week of release for a domestic total so far of $401.4 million. Globally, the film earned another $25.7 million, adding up to a staggering $1.7 billion abroad.\n<\/p>\n

Oscar hopefuls Marty Supreme and Hamnet have shown remarkable box office staying power in their sixth and ninth weeks of release, respectively. The ping-pong drama from Josh Safdie grossed $3.5 million this weekend for an impressive domestic total of $85.2 over its estimated $70 million budget. The Shakespearean romance from past Oscar winner Chloe Zhao, meanwhile, earned another $2 million, bringing its total to $17.6 million on an estimated $30\u201335 million budget.\n<\/p>\n

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with\u00a0our\u00a0EW Dispatch newsletter<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Due to Mercy’s lackluster debut, next week’s slate of releases is poised to generate a new box office champ.\n<\/p>\n

The prime contender is Sam Raimi’s highly anticipated return to the horror genre with Send Help<\/a>. The Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien-starring thriller about a couple of sparring coworkers stranded on a remote island has the power to become 2026’s first big horror hit. But it’ll have to go through the Jason Statham actioner Shelter and the post-apocalyptic Mark Fischbach chiller Iron Lung first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Avatar: Fire and Ash‘s seemingly indomitable reign at the domestic box office has finally come to an end.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270],"class_list":{"0":"post-264050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}