‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Stays On Top With $45 Million, Races To $517 Million Domestic & $1.7 Billion Worldwide To Become 7th Highest Global Grosser Ever

While Avatar: The Way of Water remains the major box office story one week into the new year and should continue to dominate in the weeks ahead, this weekend the film received a worthy companion to help power the January box office. The sci-fi horror film M3GAN, which comes from the lucrative Blumhouse/James Wan partnership, smashed expectations to boast a frighteningly good $30.2 million opening. That wasn’t enough to dethrone James Cameron’s latest epic, which grossed $45 million in its fourth weekend, but the two films were able to carry an overall box office of $104 million. It’s the first weekend since July where two films grossed above $20 million, the sixth weekend since July where the overall box office hit the nine-digits, and the second time since July that two weekends in a row did so. Unfortunately, the top two films made up 72% of the overall box office, and just one other film even grossed above $5 million (compare this to Jan 10-12, 2020 when the entire top ten was above $5 million). As well as some of the individual films are performing, the box office blues will continue until the overall slate picks up.

After the 33% drop in its fourth weekend, The Way of Water’s cume is now $517 million domestic and $1.708 billion worldwide, making it the seventh-biggest global grosser of all time. The domestic total puts it ahead of Top Gun: Maverick’s $467 million cume at the same point in its release, though TWOW’s holiday season release gives it a different trajectory. This weekend, however, improves TWOW’s odds of holding its lead. Maverick’s fourth weekend was a hair under TWOW’s at $44.7 million, and assuming the actuals hold, then TWOW topped it to have the second-biggest fourth weekend of all time after the first Avatar ($50.3 million, though it’s cume was smaller with $431 million after its fourth weekend). Maverick went on to gross another $252 million from there, and if TWOW manages to play on par with Maverick from this point on, that would give it a finish of $769 million and make it the fourth-highest domestic grosser ever (ahead of Avatar’s $750 million original release, though behind its $785 million cume which includes re-releases). A more “pessimistic” possible outcome would be to play like Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, which had a $42.4 million fourth weekend and went on to gross another $124 million. Adding that to Avatar 2’s current cume would get it to $641 million and make it the tenth-highest film of all time. Not that the range of possible domestic outcomes matters hugely for the film, which will soon cross the $2 billion global threshold and make its way into the top five all-time highest grossers (Avengers: Infinity War currently occupies fifth place with $2.048 billion).

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