Avatar: The Way Of Water Heading For $130 Million Box Office Debut, Or Enough To Buy 6.5 Kilos Of Unobtanium

"Avatar: The Way of Water" is the first feature film directed by James Cameron in more than a decade. The last blockbuster he made was "Avatar," which is currently the highest-grossing movie of all time (despite a brief upset). Cameron gave himself a pretty tough act to follow.

Earlier projections for "Avatar: The Way of Water" had it pegged for a $150 million plus opening weekend, but The Wrap reports that it's now looking at a $130-135 million debut, based on its opening day take of $53 million. Factoring in foreign markets, "The Way of Water" is expected to gross around $300 million worldwide by the end of the weekend.

There are a few caveats here that mean opening $15-20 million below projections isn't as bad as it sounds. The last decade or so of blockbuster movies has deepened the idea that the opening weekend is everything, since the franchises that dominate the yearly charts (i.e. the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars) tend to be very front-loaded. That's because there's a particular fear of plot points and cameos being spoiled, and also a fan culture where opening weekend showings are a big event.

Yet not all movies follow this pattern. This year, "Top Gun: Maverick" opened at $126 million — a very high number, but below "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" and "Thor: Love and Thunder." It went on to outdo both of those movies, though, with long legs carrying it for months and months at the box office to a still-running total of $1.48 billion worldwide, as of the time of writing. With "Avatar: The Way of Water," we can expect to see something similar.

When it comes to James Cameron movies, the usual box office pattern of peaking with the opening weekend, dropping off rapidly, and earning peanuts after a month or two does not apply. Cameron's biggest hits so far were not front-loaded: "Avatar" only grossed $77 million of its eventual $2.92 billion box office in its domestic opening weekend (73% of that total came from overseas markets). "Titanic," which has grossed $2.2 billion to date including various re-releases, started with an opening weekend of just $28 million.

The holidays still lie ahead, so we can expect to see "The Way of Water" getting a rush of families going to see it in the upcoming weeks. Then we'll be into January and February, which are notoriously dry months in terms of movie releases; the next tentpole is "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" on February 17, giving "The Way of Water" a clear two-month run with virtually no competition (aside from "M3GAN," of course). As The Wrap points out, audiences are very much onboard so far: it landed an "A" CinemaScore, to go with a score of 78% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

It's often difficult to get excited about box office numbers from anything other than a sports spectator perspective (Disney really doesn't need our support when it comes to making money). But even if you don't care about the blue aliens, "Avatar: The Way of Water" having a good, long, successful run at the box office would be positive news for people who like seeing films on the big screen.

Movie theaters were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. The box office still hasn't fully recovered, and we've seen changes initially brought about to deal with the stresses of the pandemic — in particular, day-and-date streaming releases and shorter theatrical windows — become more of a permanent fixture. Ticket sales are split between the studio(s) and the theater, but typically the distributor takes the lion's share of the opening weekend box office, while the theater's percentage increases week by week. 

That means that the strategy of pushing for big opening weekends followed by a relatively rapid move to streaming has been hard on both big theater chains and small independent cinemas. "Top Gun: Maverick" and its long, long legs were a much-needed oxygen mask for theaters in 2022, and "Avatar: "The Way of Water" could serve a similar role as we wrap up the year and head into 2023.

Of course, it should also be emphasized that $130-135 million is still a huge opening weekend. According to Giovanni Ribisi's character in "Avatar," that'll get you 6.5 kilograms of unobtanium, which is valued at $20 million per kilo in its unrefined form. (In 2154 dollars anyway; "The Way of Water" reveals that humans have found a new rare substance on Pandora to obsess over since then, so unobtanium may have become more affordable).