The anticipated box office take for the eagerly anticipated fantasy epic Avatar: The Way of Water has increased. On December 16, James Cameron’s Avatar 2 opens in theaters. It has a reported $350 million budget. Should Avatar: The Way of Water perform well at the box office, it will be the second in a series with plans for at least three more episodes. It has a lot to live up to because Cameron’s 1997 picture Titanic, which was at the time the highest-grossing movie ever, came before it and is currently the most successful movie of all time.
If Avatar: The Way of Water is to make back its enormous investment, it will apparently need to rank among the highest-grossing movies ever. The Wrap, however, forecasts that the movie will make at least $150 million in its opening weekend (up from the earlier forecast of $135 million). With China being a crucial market for its release, it is impossible to predict how much money the movie will bring in internationally over its first weekend. The movie would need to make at least $2 billion in revenue overall to cover its entire budget, a milestone that hasn’t been accomplished since before the coronavirus pandemic but was almost topped by Spider-Man: No Way Home’s $1.9 billion take.
Can Avatar 2 Be A Box Office Success Like The Original?
Since the debut of Avatar 13 years ago, a lot has changed. The emergence of streaming and the pandemic, both of which had profound repercussions on the industry, have radically altered the film environment. Superhero movies have taken over the box office in recent years, with $1 billion box office grosses becoming the standard for both Marvel and DC movies. Fast & Furious and Star Wars have both been able to continually produce enormous commercial triumphs, though. Despite this, Avatar continues to be the highest earning movie of all time (with Titanic coming in third), which is a credit to James Cameron’s skill as a blockbuster director and the groundbreaking use of CGI and 3D that captivated moviegoers.
The enormous success of this year’s Top Gun: Maverick, which has rocketed up to become the 11th highest-grossing movie ever, is evidence that audiences continue to have a voracious appetite for blockbuster sequels, even if they aren’t a part of an established pantheon of projects or a cinematic universe. It is obvious that Avatar: The Way of Water will be a huge success at the box office given that it is riding on the coattails of the most commercially successful movie ever. It’s undeniably one of the most eagerly awaited movies in recent memory, and Cameron’s reputation precedes him.
It remains to be seen if Avatar: The Way of Water will have the same level of popularity as its predecessor, particularly in the post-pandemic age. The first movie’s popularity was partly due to its extraordinary durability and reliance on rewatches, even if the sequel is predicted to initially do significantly better than Avatar. Cameron is still convinced that Avatar: The Way of Water will have a strong rewatch value; the question is how the filmmakers decide to measure success. This massive production could need a higher haul than that to be able to call itself a financial success, but the sequel seems extremely certain to exceed the $1 billion barrier and any picture would characterise this as an amazing triumph. It would undoubtedly need to break records when it is released, but it already contains all the required components.
