As you may recall, there was some anxiety over how well Avatar: The Way of Water would do at the box office. It had been a whopping 13 years since the first entry; did anyone even care about Pandora anymore? Even its creator, James Cameron, was worried, threatening to only make a couple more sequels instead of his threatened several. It turns out there was no need to fret: In mere weeks it handily outgrossed Top Gun: Maverick. Now it’s setting its sights on an even bigger money-gobbler.
As per Deadline, over the weekend Jake Sully and his fellow Na’vi sailed past the $1.8 billion mark. That means it’s about to overtake Spider-Man: No Way Home, which bowed in late 2021 and Hoovered up $1.921 billion. That threequel was the first mega-super-duper-blockbuster since the pandemic began, revealing that audiences were willing to come back to the multiplexes in droves, at least if they’re extremely expensive sequels.
Right now, Avatar 2 is the seventh highest grossing movie ever, not adjusted for inflation. After surpassing No Way Home, it’ll then have come for Avengers: Infinity War ($2.04 billion), Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($2.06 billion), Cameron’s own Titanic ($2.18 billion), Avengers: Endgame ($2.79 billion), and finally the one started it all: the original Avatar ($2.92 billion).
Avatar 2 might not go all the way to the top, and it probably won’t come close to the highest grossing film adjusted for inflation: Gone with the Wind, which over the decades has made an estimated $3.92 billion, and at a time when movie tickets weren’t as expensive as they are now.
(Via Deadline)
