'Avatar: Way of Water' tops $1.4 billion at global box office

"The Way of Water" is now the 13th biggest movie of all time.

Ahead of Avatar: Way of Water, director James Cameron said they won't know until the third weekend if the movie is a hit. "You wouldn't know it the first weekend," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "Titanic didn't work that way. Avatar didn't work that way." He was right; both films were written off before release, and their relatively low-key openings didn't quite instill confidence. But they went on to become all-time blockbusters, cementing Cameron's status as the undisputed box office king. Now that "The Way of Water" has been in theaters for three weekends, the verdict is pretty much set. Despite what you may have heard about the series' lack of meme power and non-existent cultural vibe, people have given it glowing associations of approval.

With $444 million domestically and $956 million in foreign markets, The Way of Water now stands at a staggering $1,401 million worldwide. The movie was actually up 6% from the previous weekend, taking in $66.8 million compared to the previous weekend's $63.3 million.

Cameron is right; his films tend to make the list Their unique paths at the box office. In the era when most of the big pillars were pre-installed, the way of water refused to fall at all. That can be chalked up to the sheer lack of competition, or to the film's -- like most of Cameron's -- recurring value.

The first Avatar was known for being a fairly low box office hit in 2009 -- it grossed around $77 million in its first weekend -- and then showed amazing legs during the holidays and in 2010, eventually becoming the highest-grossing film in history. top movie. It overtook another Cameron hit, "Titanic," to take the No. 1 spot. Counting the millions of dollars earned by re-releases over the years, the first "Avatar" ended up grossing $785 million domestically and $2.9 billion worldwide.

The odds of "Water Way" hitting those numbers are slim; recent projections put the film's final worldwide gross in the range of $1.6 billion to $1.9 billion. That should eclipse Top Gun: Maverick's $1.48 billion gross, making it the highest-grossing film of 2022 and into the top 10 of all time. If it can reach $1.9 billion, it will surpassed Spider-Man: No Way Home as the highest-grossing movie of the pandemic era. Cameron also announced that "Ways of Water" would have to be the third or fourth biggest movie in history to break even, meaning anything below $2 billion worldwide would be a concern for the franchise's future . However, other reports suggest that the film's actual break-even point is around $1.4 billion, meaning the film is now profitable.

Set ten years after the events of the first film, Ways of Water introduces audiences to the water tribes of Pandora, marking a visual shift from the tropical forest setting of the first film. Cameron used state-of-the-art motion capture technology to bring underwater Pandora to life, and also experimented with fluctuating high frame rate techniques to enhance the immersion of certain sequences.

There's a clear path ahead of Waterway - at least until February's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Fever - meaning a $2 billion-plus ending might not be out of the question. You can watch our interview with producer Jon Landau here and stay tuned to Collider for more renew.