Holiday Box Office Preview: ‘Avatar 2’ Expected to Hold Top Spot as Several New Films Hit Theaters

“Avatar: The Way of Water” will get most of the box office riches and scrutiny this Christmas weekend as it continues its push to $1 billion and beyond. But in its shadow, several other films will try to draw the attention of moviegoers, including a DreamWorks animated movie, a Whitney Houston biopic, and a polarizing period film from an Oscar-winning director.

Studios will report this Christmas period as a four-day weekend considering that Christmas Eve, which falls on a Saturday, tends to be a slow day for moviegoing that gets made up for by strong traffic on the following two days.

That will likely make the three-day weekend drop for “Avatar 2” steeper than one might hope for a film that’s trying to show staying power through the holidays. But as we noted in our Monday WrapPRO column, “Avatar 2” is hoping for very strong weekday totals between Christmas Day and New Year’s. If the four-day weekend total for the film is at least $85-$90 million and/or the domestic total is around $300 million, then “Avatar 2” will be keeping pace with the year’s top grossing film, “Top Gun: Maverick.” A $96 million four-day total would be consistent with “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” which made that amount back when Christmas fell on a Sunday in 2016.

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As for the newcomers, Universal/DreamWorks’ “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” is expected to take the No. 2 spot on the box office charts. Unlike the other new releases, “Puss in Boots” is getting a head start with a Wednesday release, following the same strategy that Universal used last Christmas with Illumination’s “Sing 2,” which earned $46.9 million in its first six days amidst the COVID-19 Omicron surge.

Currently, “Puss In Boots 2” is tracking for a lower total than that, with six-day projections currently standing in the low $30 million range against a reported $90 million budget. The lower projections can likely be attributed to the fact that it has been 11 years since the first “Puss in Boots” hit theaters.

A decade-plus-long wait didn’t hurt “Avatar 2,” but it’s a different matter for family films considering that a child who saw the first “Puss in Boots” in theaters when they were in first grade would now be in high school, so the interest among kids that’s critical to animated box office success may be muted.

But on the bright side, early reviews have been very strong with critics giving the film a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score with 46 reviews logged, suggesting that the film could get the strong legs that the first “Puss in Boots” got, turning a $34 million opening from its October 2011 launch into a $149 million domestic and $554 million worldwide total.

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The ideal situation for “Puss in Boots 2” is that families, looking to get out of the house during the holidays, decide to give the film a shot based on strong reviews, even if the franchise doesn’t have the freshness of “Minions” or “Sing.” Some support from Millennial moviegoers interested in seeing a sequel to a film from their childhood may come as well.

Then there are other wide release newcomers with more uneasy outlooks such as Paramount’s “Babylon,” the three-hour dramedy from “La La Land” director Damien Chazelle. Starring Diego Calva, Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt in a film that dives into the cocaine-and-booze-loaded debauchery of Roaring 20s Hollywood and the turbulent transition out of the silent film era, “Babylon” has sharply divided critics and Academy members who have attended early screenings, as reflected by its five Golden Globe and nine Critics Choice Award nominations while receiving a 63% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Unfortunately, polarizing films don’t tend to make for box office hits these days, especially for a film with a hard R rating and a three-hour runtime. Tracking for “Babylon,” which has a $78 million budget, has topped out at $10-$12 million over four days.

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If critics’ reviews are indicative of audience reception — which may be even worse if the film’s most shocking and scatological scenes alienate a wide swath of moviegoers — then the film might not have strong legs at the box office and end up being the latest awards hopeful to flop. Then again, “Babylon” may still be seen by Paramount as a net win if the first-look deal signed with Chazelle off the back of this film encourages other filmmakers to bring their ideas to the studio.

Also expected to leave little mark on the box office is Sony/TriStar’s “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” which stars Naomi Ackie in a biopic about the late, legendary pop star. Despite Houston’s devoted fan base which has endured more than a decade after her passing, tracking for this film about her life and career has stayed low with the four-day opening projected for a $12 million total.

On the specialty side, A24 will expand Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale,” which stars Oscar frontrunner Brendan Fraser as a morbidly obese man trying to mend his relationship with his daughter. The film’s six-screen release posted a $60,000 per theater average — the highest seen in this poor year for arthouse fare — with a total of $596,000 in limited release through Tuesday.

United Artists/Orion will also open Sarah Polley’s acclaimed “Women Talking” in an eight-screen limited release in five cities this weekend. Based on Miriam Toews’ book and featuring an ensemble cast that includes Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley, the film is set in an isolated Mennonite community where the women debate how to best confront the physical and sexual abuse they repeatedly suffer. Holding a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score, the film is set to go wide in late January after the announcement of the Oscar nominations, where “Women Talking” is expected to contend in multiple major categories.

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