Avatar 2 gains US$56 million in storm-hit second weekend

WALT Disney’s science-fiction epic Avatar: The Way of Water battled winter storms in the United States and Canada to bring in an estimated US$56 million in ticket sales this weekend through Sunday (Dec 25).

It garnered another US$168.6 million in theatres internationally over the weekend, for a total haul of US$855.4 million globally since its Dec 16 release, Disney said in a statement on Sunday.

The company predicted the film would take in US$82 million domestically over the four days that include the Monday after Christmas.

While the movie easily topped the box office, domestic ticket sales fell 58 per cent from its US$134.1 million opening weekend. That’s typical for a big film release, but executives at theatre chains and at Disney had said they expected The Way of Water would be more resilient. That was before storms shut some cinemas and brought dangerously cold weather in many parts of the US. 

The original Avatar had a strong, but not spectacular, opening in 2009. It became the highest-grossing movie in Hollywood history because it stayed on top of the box office for seven weeks. In all, that movie sold US$2.92 billion worth of tickets globally, buoyed by word-of-mouth about its 3D effects and fans who saw it multiple times. 

Writer-director James Cameron secured a massive budget to make the sequel, with The Way of Water production costs alone topping US$350 million. Disney is planning to release three more Avatar films through 2028. Whether it can make that investment pay off remains to be seen. 

While domestic box office receipts for The Way of Water came in below some estimates in its opening weekend, the film generated US$50 million a day in ticket sales globally after that. Ticket sales may benefit from improving weather and a return of theatregoers in the coming weeks.

The movie faced competition this weekend from three new movies in wide release. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, an animated film from Comcast’s Universal Pictures, finished in second place with US$11.35 million in North American ticket sales through Sunday, according to an estimate from Comscore. 

Sony Group’s I Wanna Dance with Somebody, a biopic of singer Whitney Houston, came in third with a three-day total of US$5.3 million. Babylon, an adult drama from Paramount Global about the movie business in the 1920s, debuted in fourth place with US$3.5 million through Sunday.

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The entertainment business is still struggling to convince movie fans to come back to theatres after pandemic-related closures. Films are appearing on streaming services much faster than they did in the past, as media giants look to bulk up subscriptions to those services. That’s conditioned people to wait a few weeks to see new movies at home.

With just a few days left in the year, industrywide ticket sales total US$7.2 billion, well below the US$11.4 billion generated domestically in 2019. BLOOMBERG