Avatar: The Way of Water Passes $2 Billion at Global Box Office
20th Century Studios Avatar: The Way of Water
Avatar: The Way of Water has crossed another major box office milestone.
Over the weekend, the James Cameron-directed movie reached $2 billion grossed at the global box office, just one day after it surpassed Spider-Man: No Way Home as the sixth-highest grossing film in box office history and just over one month after it hit theaters in December 2022, according to Variety.
The epic retained its No. 1 spot at the domestic box office for the sixth consecutive weekend, adding $20 million from 3,790 theaters, declining roughly 40 percent, Variety reports. Thus far, the film has amassed an astonishing $2.02 billion worldwide, the trade reports.
The movie joins just five others in history to cross the $2 billion box office threshold, including 68-year-old director Cameron's 2009 original that became the highest-grossing movie of all time, 2019's Avengers: Endgame, Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens and 2018's Avengers: Infinity War, according to Variety.
On Jan. 5, The Way of Water passed $1.51 billion worldwide as it took Tom Cruise's Top Gun: Maverick's spot as the No. 1 movie released in 2022, according to The Hollywood Reporter
RELATED: James Cameron Says Every Avatar Sequel Will Feature a New Narrator: 'Giving Something Away Here'
Of all the movies that hit theaters in 2022, the only other to make over $1 billion globally was Jurassic World Dominion. Avatar: The Way of Water reached the billion-dollar mark in just 14 days.
20th Century Studios Poster for Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Cameron, 68, recently told GQ that the sequel was "very f---ing" expensive to make. He joked that he told the studio the film was "the worst business case in movie history," and that it would "have to be the third- or fourth-highest-grossing film in history" to just "break even."
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Avatar: The Way of Water stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Stephen Lang and more. It earned Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award nominations for best picture. (Oscar nominations will be announced later in January.)
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In December 2021, Cameron told Entertainment Weekly that, given the state of moviegoing amid the pandemic, he worried whether the sequel would be able to match Avatar's success.
"The big issue is: Are we going to make any damn money? Big, expensive films have got to make a lot of money," said Cameron at the time. "We're in a new world post-COVID, post-streaming. Maybe those [box office] numbers will never be seen again. Who knows? It's all a big roll of the dice."
Avatar: The Way of Water is now in theaters, while Avatar 3 is expected to release in theaters on Dec. 30, 2024.
