“Avatar: The Way of Water” surpasses $955 million worldwide

• Avatar: The Way of Water is now the third-highest-grossing movie of the year.
• The long-awaited science fiction sequel has already grossed $955 million globally.
• This corresponds to around $2 billion in box office earnings worldwide.

Avatar: The Way of Water is now the third-highest-grossing movie of the year after breaking the $950 million barrier worldwide. The long-awaited science fiction sequel has already grossed $955 million globally, including $293 million from local audiences and another $661 million from international markets.

This places the movie third on the 2022 list, behind Top Gun: Maverick ($1.488 billion) and Jurassic World Dominion ($1.003 billion), surpassing the lifetime global total of Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The Way of Water is anticipated to end up being the best-performing movie of 2022, after all, is said and done, surpassing Dominion (and $1 billion) before it enters its third weekend of release.

However, it is still uncertain whether the movie will be able to meet the high bar for success that Cameron has openly set for it. The Way of Water’s budget was reported to be north of $400 million, and according to the director, it will need to end as the third or fourth-biggest movie of all time to break even. This corresponds to around $2 billion in box office earnings worldwide.

Even though The Way of Water’s weekend-to-weekend performance wasn’t as strong as the first Avatar’s, it still managed to surpass projections at the domestic box office by around $10 million, which is a lot. The Way of Water has a wide runway ahead of it with minimal competition in the upcoming few months, at least until Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is released.

The Way of Water is currently exhibiting good legs over the holiday season, bolstered by favorable word-of-mouth and the “event-movie” status that was so advantageous to the first film as well. The 2009 film Avatar notoriously had a fairly underwhelming domestic box office debut but went on to rule the industry for months. In the end, it became the film with the biggest worldwide box office. Taking into account its numerous re-releases over the past ten years, the movie has earned $785 million domestically and $2.9 billion internationally. Avengers: Endgame briefly surpassed it as the most successful film in history until it quickly reclaimed the position. When it was halfway through its domestic run, the first Avatar had brought in $232 million.

The sequel picks up more than ten years after the events of the first movie and follows Jake Sully and Neytiri, the two main characters, as they flee a recurring threat and seek safety among the water clans of the tropical Pandora. The sequel is being shown in cutting-edge Variable High Frame Rate thanks to years of work by director James Cameron perfecting the technique.

The Way of Water’s $955 million worldwide gross places it just outside the top 50 list, behind Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End ($960 million) and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug ($959 million). China ($104 million, despite a recent COVID epidemic), South Korea ($25 million), France ($21 million), and Australia ($20 million) are the film’s largest foreign markets.

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