{"id":339917,"date":"2025-12-28T21:46:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T21:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/339917\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T21:46:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T21:46:07","slug":"avatar-3-tops-christmas-with-88m-timothee-chalamet-strikes-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/339917\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Avatar 3’ Tops Christmas With $88M; Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet Strikes Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJames Cameron\u2019s Avatar: Fire and Ash<\/a> dominated the long Christmas weekend with a four-day earnings of $88 million, including $64 million for the three-day weekend proper. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhile it\u2019s lagging behind the last film at the same point its run, Fire and Ash is still a monster, grossing another $181.2 million overseas for a global tally of $760.4 million through Sunday, including $217.7 million domestically and $542.7 million overseas. And with a week to go before the holidays are officially wrapped, it should be at $1 billion by the end of next weekend.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat would give Disney dominion over the only three 2025 movies that crossed $1 billion at the 2025 worldwide box office<\/a> behind Zootopia 2, which \u2014 no joke \u2014 placed No. 2 over for the three-day Christmas weekend with $20 million in its fifth outing, and Lilo & Stitch. While this is all great news for Disney, it\u2019s a sobering reminder as to why domestic box office revenue for 2025 will come in behind, or barely match, 2024\u2019s $8.8 billion.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt wasn\u2019t for a lack of trying. Rather, there were too few events pics, although the eclectic mix of presents under the Christmas Day tree resulted in the best holiday in terms of overall revenue since the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\n\tA24\u2019s high-profile period pic Marty Supreme<\/a> \u2014 starring Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet as a 1950s table tennis champion<\/a> \u2014 was the biggest surprise in grabbing second place over the four-day weekend with $27.1 million, the best opening in the history of the indie studio.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a surprise upset, Chalamet\u2019s film easily came in ahead of Sony\u2019s Anaconda, which also opened on Dec. 25. The Jack Black-Paul Rudd film, skewered by critics, opened to $23.6 million domestically over the four-day holiday weekend for a global start of $43.7 million, in line with expectations.<\/p>\n

\n\tMarty Supreme began made headlines the weekend before Christmas with a record-breaking per-location average of $145,913 across six locations in New York City and L.A., the best in A24\u2019s history and the best of any film since 2016\u2019s La La Land. Sporting a pricey budget of $60 million to $70 million, it is reportedly the most expensive movie ever made by the indie studio. (Period pics are expensive!)<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his review for THR<\/a>, chief critic David Rooney says Marty Supreme reinvents the sports comedy. \u201cMarking the first time since his 2008 solo debut that\u00a0Josh Safdie\u00a0has directed a feature without his brother and longtime collaborator Benny,\u00a0Marty Supreme\u00a0turns out, paradoxically, to be his most Safdian movie to date. Propelled by a hot-wired Timoth\u00e9e\u00a0Chalamet as a cocky operator aiming for global table tennis glory, this genre-defying original is an exhilarating sports comedy, a scrappy character study, a thrumming evocation of early \u201850s New York City \u2014 plus a reimagining of all those things. Think of it as\u00a0Uncut Gems<\/a>\u00a0meets\u00a0Catch Me If You Can\u00a0and maybe you\u2019re halfway there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A\u2019zion and Tyler, the Creator also star in this tale of an aspiring table tennis champion angling to ping pong his way out of 1950s Lower East Side Manhattan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tChalamet has stopped at nothing to help market the movie \u2014 including becoming the first person to stand atop The Sphere in Las Vegas \u2014 and it appears to be paying off. In the weeks leading up to the film\u2019s release, he wrote and directed a staged Zoom call with A24\u2019s marketing team in which he presented increasingly ridiculous ideas to promote\u00a0Marty Supreme. One of the ideas presented actually became reality: fly a bright orange rented blimp\u00a0with the movie\u2019s title imprinted on each side. While there was talk of a cross-country tour, the blimp is based in the Los Angeles area. The Zoom also resulted in the idea for Safdie and the cast to light the Empire State Building orange ahead of the New York premiere.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe big question facing Marty Supreme, which placed third for the Friday-Sunday weekend behind Zootopia 2 with $17.5 million, is whether it can break out and play to mainstream audiences, versus the more traditional specialty and awards voter crowd.<\/p>\n

\n\tOther Christmas victors included Lionsgate\u2019s The Housemaid, starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, and Angel Studios\u2019 faith-based David.<\/p>\n

\n\tChristmas Day falling on a Thursday is a dream scenario for theater owners, since it gives them a long holiday weekend. And the week between Christmas and New Year\u2019s is one of the most lucrative for moviegoing, considering that schools and colleges are closed, with many adults off from work as well.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Cameron\u2019s Avatar: Fire and Ash dominated the long Christmas weekend with a four-day earnings of $88 million,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[10192,7214,96,59,106692,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-339917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-avatar","tag-box-office","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-marty-supreme","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}