Avatar: Fire and Ash will continue its box office streak over this early January weekend, landing at No. 1 for the fourth weekend in a row with $21.3 million from 3,700 theaters.
Avatar currently stands at $342.6 million domestically. While not performing as well as the first two Avatar films, Fire and Ash has easily cleared the global $1 billion mark after three weekends in cinemas, and after this weekend, its global total is set to land at $1.23 billion.
The James Cameron franchise installment is coming in well ahead of the weekend’s two new releases: Paramount horror Primate and Lionsgate’s Greenland 2: Migration.
For its part, Primate is vying for the No. 2 spot, opening at 2,964 venues and $11.3 million in ticket sales for its opening weekend. Johannes Roberts, known for horror thrillers like 47 Meters Down, directs the horror film about a domesticated chimpanzee that turns on the family that raised him (and some unwitting houseguests) after becoming rabid. Oscar winner Troy Kotsur stars in the $20 million-plus budget movie, along with Johnny Sequoyah and Jessica Alexander. Overseas, the movie landed $2.1 million for a global total $13.4 million.
Running close behind Primate is Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney starring success story The Housemaid with $11.2 million in estimated weekend ticket sales. The Paul Feig-directed thriller, which already has a planned sequel, has a $93 million total in North America and $150 million worldwide.
In fourth place is the animated juggernaut Zooptopia 2, which earned $10.1 million in its seventh weekend of release and now has a global gross of $1.65 billion to date. The film is Walt Disney Animation’s top-grossing movie.
Greenland 2, a sequel to the 2020 disaster movie, is the weekend’s other new entry and is coming in at No. 5 with $8.5 million from 2,710 locations. Lionsgate has the domestic rights to the Gerard Butler-starrer from director Ric Roman Waugh that takes place after the events of the first film, when a comet wreaked havoc on Earth. In the follow-up, the central family must leave their Greenland bunker in search of a new home in post-apocalyptic Europe.
Outside of Avatar 3, notable holdovers at the multiplex include Timothee Chalamet’s awards season frontrunner Marty Supreme, which earned $7.3 million over the weekend, dropping 38 percent. The Josh Safdie-directed ping pong epic, which has a budget of $70 million, has now passed that figure at the domestic box office. Also in the awards conversation is Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, which generated $1.3 million from 147 screens over the weekend. That film, in its third week of limited release, has a cume of $3.6 million.
Elsewhere, Sony’s adventure comedy Anaconda passed a milestone, earning over $100 million at the global box office. The Jack Black and Paul Rudd-starrer made $5.1 million in North America and now has a global total of $110.1 million.
Jan 11, 8:50 a.m. Updated with the full weekend box office estimates.