In 3 Days, Avatar: Fire and Ash Outgrossed Disney’s Sci-Fi Box Office Bomb

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According to Variety, Avatar: Fire and Ash earned $88 million domestically in its opening weekend. The global debut stands at $345 million. Both of these figures are obviously significantly higher than what Tron: Ares grossed its entire time in theaters, but it isn’t all positive news. Fire and Ash opened much lower than its 2022 predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water, which made $134 million domestically and $435 million globally when it opened three years ago.

Will Avatar: Fire and Ash Have Strong Legs at the Box Office?

Image Courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Going into the weekend, Avatar: Fire and Ash was projected to earn somewhere between $90-100 million domestically. While $88 million isn’t anything to sneeze at, it’s still below the estimates and is arguably an unremarkable debut for the year’s biggest holiday tentpole. The Avatar films are unsurprisingly very expensive endeavors, and Fire and Ash is no exception. It sports a $400 million production budget, meaning it needs to earn a considerable amount of money just to break even. Fire and Ash has nearly recouped its budget after one weekend, but the production costs do not include marketing and distribution expenses, meaning the film is still a long way from profitability.

If this was any other franchise, there would be concerns about a potential box office bomb, but Avatar is one of one when it comes to commercial performance. Historically, this series has never been one to come storming out of the gates with a record-breaking debut. The first two Avatar movies hit the $2 billion mark because they had incredibly strong legs at the box office, which fueled lengthy runs. If Fire and Ash is to join that company, it will need to have a similar amount of staying power. How well it holds in its second weekend will go a long way in determining Fire and Ash‘s box office fate.

It helps that Fire and Ash remains the highest-profile title on the market. There are a few new releases coming out on Christmas Day — Anaconda, Song Sung Blue, and Marty Supreme — but none of them have the same kind of four-quadrant general audience appeal as a sci-fi blockbuster designed for IMAX 3D. The other movies coming out have more niche demographics and are trying to land as counterprogramming options. That said, it’s not entirely guaranteed that Fire and Ash will remain a big draw. The film’s Rotten Tomatoes score is the lowest for a James Cameron-directed feature in decades, meaning word of mouth isn’t fully on its side. The general consensus is that it delivers plenty of spectacle but struggles to bring anything new to the table. That could make it a tougher sell for moviegoers who are more on the fence.

Fire and Ash‘s protracted run time of 3 hours, 15 minutes could also hurt it since that limits the number of daily screenings theaters can host. The threequel should be able to repeat as box office champion in its second weekend, but people will keep a close eye on how far it falls. In 2009, the original Avatar had a truly unprecedented 1.8% decline in its second weekend, while The Way of Water dropped a respectable 52.8%. A case can be made that the novelty of Avatar has worn off a bit now, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of staying power Fire and Ash has. There’s a reason why Cameron isn’t moving full speed ahead on Avatar 4 just yet. He wants to make sure Fire and Ash does well enough to warrant it.

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