James Cameron can’t stop winning.
The blockbuster maverick is riding high on the box office returns from his latest effort, Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third entry in his famously profitable fantasy series. Fire and Ash brought in $40 million domestically and $169.6 million around the world in its third week of release, bringing its global tally across the $1 billion threshold.
The film CGI fantasia now boasts $306 million in total proceeds at home, and $1.08 million abroad, per Comscore. Fire and Ash’s domestic drop from $64 million in week 2 to this week’s $40 million represents only a 37 percent drop, a strong figure for a film of its scale at this point in its release trajectory. That same figure on the global stage dropped to 29 percent.
Still from ‘Zootopia 2’.
Disney
Still, Cameron has yet to earn the right to take home the title of 2025’s highest-grossing film director. For now, that honor remains with Jared Bush and Byron Howard, the co-directors of Zootopia 2. Disney’s animated sequel currently sits at $1.58 billion at the global box office, and $363.6 million domestically, after taking in $81.7 million and $19 million respectively in week 6.
Fire and Ash is also notably underperforming compared to its predecessor, 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water. That film opened to a staggering $134 million, compared with Fire and Ash’s $88 million, and at this point in its release cycle, it boasted $425.5 million.
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With 2025 now in rear view at the domestic box office, the year can be deemed a success, having grown 1.5 percent compared to last year with an $8.87 billion final count.
The last few weeks played a major role in volleying the year over that net, with the sequelmania releases of Wicked: For Good, Zootopia 2, Avatar: Fire and Ash, and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 drumming up a stunning amount of business at the box office. With Avatar and Zootopia locked in at the No. 1 and No. 2 positions since the former’s release in December, other titles have risen to edge Wicked and Freddy’s out of the way for the bronze.
This week, Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried’s psychological thriller The Housemaid cleaned up with a $14.8 million domestic gross in its third week, while Timothee Chalamet’s ping pong drama Marty Supreme scored No. 4 with $12.5 million at the same point in its release cycle.
Next up, Avatar’s supremacy likely remains undaunted, with the second week of January’s only major releases being Paramount’s simian horror Primate, and Lionsgate’s apocalyptic thriller sequel Greeland 2: Migration.