If you want to deliver one of the biggest box office hits in the history of cinema, then history has officially proven that your best bets are to either hire James Cameron to direct, or take the reins on a Marvel Cinematic Universe project.
After another unstoppable weekend in theaters, Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water has now sailed past $1.7 billion globally to overtake Jurassic World as the seventh highest-grossing release of all-time. The scary thing is that the sci-fi sequel isn’t showing any signs of slowing down, either, and it’s fast closing in on Spider-Man: No Way Home.
As things stand, then, the aforementioned blockbusters are behind only Avengers: Infinity War, Titanic, Avengers: Endgame, and the first Avatar on the historical charts, with Star Wars: The Force Awakens now the only one of the seven heftiest commercial hits the industry has ever seen that weren’t directed by Cameron or produced by Kevin Feige.
That adds another layer of intrigue to the filmmaker’s somewhat salty relationship with the comic book monolith, having spent virtually the entire press tour for The Way of Water giving it the old “I’m not going to bash Marvel, but…” spiel. If things carry on as they’ve been doing for the last few weeks, then the return to Pandora is looking highly likely to join the $2 billion club, and things will get really interesting if it passes The Force Awakens to create an Cameron/Feige vacuum at the very top.
