Some things in life just can’t be stopped, and it would appear that Avatar: The Way of Water making an increasingly inevitable charge towards $2 billion at the box office is one of them.
James Cameron admitted that his sci-fi sequel needed to become one of the highest-grossing releases in the history of cinema simply to break even, and he’s got absolutely nothing to worry about. Fresh from becoming one of the 15 top-grossing titles of all-time in less than two weeks, the filmmaker’s return to Pandora continues knocking them down on a daily basis.
Having only just secured the third-biggest New Year’s Day haul of $21 million – behind fellow $2 billion hits Star Wars: The Force Awakens‘ $34 million and the first Avatar‘s $25 million – The Way of Water will imminently pass Top Gun: Maverick to become the heftiest commercial hit of 2022.
Next up, $1.5 billion will put it among the all-time Top 10, which in turn makes Cameron the first director to oversee three features to have reached the milestone. Avatar will also become the first franchise to have its first and second installments clear that figure, and there’s absolutely no reason why it won’t join Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame as the only other back-to-back entries in a standalone film series to clear $2 billion.
Let’s not forget that Avatar: The Way of Water has only been playing in theaters for less than two and a half weeks, and it’s over a month and a half until Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania lands to take a bite out of its biggest audience, so Cameron is far from done, which is a little scary to think about.
