{"id":104260,"date":"2025-12-21T23:20:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T23:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/104260\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T23:20:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T23:20:12","slug":"avatar-fire-and-ash-heats-up-the-box-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/104260\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ heats up the box office"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Na\u2019vi won the battle of the box office this weekend, as \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d hauled in a hefty $88 million in the U.S. and Canada during its opening weekend.<\/p>\n

The third installment of the Disney-owned 20th Century Studios\u2019 \u201cAvatar\u201d franchise brought in an estimated total of $345 million globally, with about $257 million of that coming from international audiences. The movie reportedly has a budget of at least $350 million.<\/p>\n

Box office analysts had expected a big international response to the most recent film, particularly since its predecessor \u201cAvatar: The Way of Water\u201d had strong showings in markets like Germany, France and China.<\/p>\n

In China, the film opened to an estimated $57.6 million, marking the second highest 2025 opening for a U.S. film in the country since Disney\u2019s \u201cZootopia 2\u201d a few weeks ago. (That film went on to gross more than $271.7 million in China<\/a> on its way to a global box office total of $1.1 billion.)<\/p>\n

The strong response in China is another sign that certain movies can still do well in the country<\/a>, which was once seen as a key force multiplier for big blockbusters and animated family films but has in recent years cooled to American movies due to geopolitics and the rise of its domestic film industry.<\/p>\n

Angel Studio\u2019s animated biblical tale \u201cDavid\u201d came in second at the box office this weekend, with an estimated domestic gross of $22 million. Lionsgate thriller \u201cThe Housemaid,\u201d Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Movies\u2019 \u201cThe Spongebob Movie: Search for Squarepants\u201d and \u201cZootopia 2\u201d rounded out the top five.<\/p>\n

The weekend\u2019s haul likely comes as a relief to theater owners, who have weathered a roller coaster year.<\/p>\n

After a difficult first three months, the spring brought hits like \u201cA Minecraft Movie\u201d and \u201cSinners\u201d before the summer ended mostly flat. A sleepy fall brought panic to the exhibition business until closer to the Thanksgiving holiday, when \u201cWicked: For Good\u201d and \u201cZootopia 2\u201d drew in audiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Na\u2019vi won the battle of the box office this weekend, as \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d hauled in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[12977,44713,56589,3573,7363,1924,3802,22844,48,52,51,47,50,49,4287,41841,1089,2281,8843,2695,56590],"class_list":["post-104260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ash","tag-avatar","tag-box-office","tag-china","tag-country","tag-film","tag-fire","tag-germany","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-movie","tag-opening-weekend","tag-search","tag-u-s","tag-way","tag-weekend","tag-zootopia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}