{"id":375341,"date":"2025-12-29T05:10:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T05:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/375341\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T05:10:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T05:10:10","slug":"avatar-3-tops-christmas-with-88m-timothee-chalamet-strikes-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/375341\/","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 Lilo & Stitch and Zootopia 2, which \u2014 no joke \u2014 stayed high up on the Christmas chart five weeks after first opening as it crossed a near-record $561 million in China alone finish Sunday with a cume of $1.420 billion (Avatar<\/a> is also doing business in China). While this is all great news for Disney \u2014 save for its December box office bomb Ella McCay from director James L. Brooks\u2019 \u2014 the parcity of billion-dollar earners it\u2019s a still sobering reminder for the industry as to why domestic box office revenue for 2025 will barely match, 2024\u2019s $8.8 billion. <\/p>\n

\n\tThere just wasn\u2019t enough product due to the lingering delayed caused by the pandemic and subsequent strikes. The bright news: the eclectic mix of presents under the Christmas Day tree resulted in the best holiday in terms of overall domestic revenue since the pandemic, and underscores the importance for having having diversity of product.<\/p>\n

\n\tA24\u2019s high-profile period pic Marty Supreme<\/a><\/a> \u2014 directed by Josh Safdie and starring Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet as a 1950s table tennis champion<\/a> \u2014 was the biggest surprise in grabbing second place over a four-day holiday opening of $27.1 million, the best opening in the history of the indie studio. The pic\u2019s Friday-Sunday haul was $17.5 million, putting it at No. 3. <\/p>\n

\n\tMarty Supreme began made headlines the weekend before Christmdas 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!) Gwyneth 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\tIn a surprise upset, Chalamet\u2019s film easily came in ahead of Sony\u2019s Anaconda, which also opened Dec. 25 alongdide Focus Features\u2019 specialty pic Song Sung Blue, starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnaconda, rebuffed by many critics<\/a>, posted a four-day opening of $23.6 million for a global start of $14.7 million and fourth-place finish domestically. However, it almost lost the four-day weekend to Sony\u2019s popular femme-fueled thriller The Housemaid, which took in a better-than-expected $23.1 million against a modest $36 million bdget. And for the three-day weekend itself, the well-reviewed, Paul Feig-directed film<\/a> came in ahead of Anaconda with an estimated $14.9 million, versus $14.5 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tOther holiday titles included Angel Studios\u2019 faith-based David, which placed sixth for the four days with $16.7 million, including $12.1 million for the three days, for a promising cume of $49.2 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tParamount\u2019s The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants \u2014 which opened Dec. 19 opposite Fire and Ash, David, and The Housmaid \u2014 came in seventh with an estimated $14.1 million for the four-day holiday weekend and $10.9 million for the three. It\u2019s domestic total is ho-hum $37.8 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tSong Sung Blue followed with a four-day weekend gross of $11.5 million, and is based on the 2008 documentary of the same name about Mike and Claire Sardina, who performed in the popular Neil Diamond Tribute Band Lightning & Thunder. Alongside David, Song Sung Blue boasts the highest audience ranking on Rotten Tomatoes (98 percent) of any Christmas title playing nationwide. It\u2019s also been embraced by criti<\/a>c<\/a>s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tUniversal\u2019s Thanksgiving tentpole Wicked: For Good stayed in the top 10 chart as it crossed the $500 miilon mark globally, including an estimated domestic cume of $331.6 million through Sunday and $172.3 million overseas. It got clobbered in China, one of its final markets, where it opened to less than $1 million. And it\u2019s looking less and less likely that the second part of Jon M. Chu\u2019s adapation of the famed Broadway play will match the $770 milion earned globally by Wicked a year ago. Still, no one can predict the future.<\/p>\n

\n\tChristmas Day falling on a Thursday is a dream scenario for theater owners, since moviegoing picks ups in earnest in the later afternoon and continues unabated throughout the 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\tEstimates will be updated Monday.<\/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":375342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[35154,2642,88,56102],"class_list":["post-375341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-avatar","tag-box-office","tag-entertainment","tag-marty-supreme"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}