The new long-range Avatar: The Way of Water opening weekend projections for the box office have the sequel almost doubling James Cameron's first movie. The sci-fi thriller of 2009 has broken all kinds of records at the box office on its way to becoming the most-grossing film ever. The phenomenal box office success of Avatar has also attracted a lot of attention to the amount of money Avatar 2 will make. Even though no one expects Avatar 2 to surpass the previous film's $2.9 billion worldwide The film's huge budget and the fact that Disney is investing in the future of the franchise mean that there is some expectation on Avatar: The Way of Water to succeed.
Based on the latest long-range trackers provided from Box Office Pro, Avatar: The Way of Water is now projected to make over $135 million in its opening weekend domestically. The Avatar film's original box office debut was a massive $77M domestically in December. So these new projections call for Avatar 2's opening weekend box office to be nearly twice the initial. The projections also call for the sequel to make $475M domestically by the end in its theater run, which is less than previous reports and about half of the total amount Avatar made domestically.
A strong debut weekend Avatar: The Way of Water is a good beginning for the sequel's success in the world of box-office. The reported $135M opening would mean that the sequel will earn within a single weekend what took James Cameron's first film a full week to earn. But, Avatar 2's box office will still have a tough path to beating the original. The secret to Avatar's remarkable box-office success lies in the film's incredible word-of-mouth and repeated watchings that kept the movie in theaters for 234 days. That is unheard of nowadays even for the largest films. As a reference, Top Gun: Maverick topped out at 161 days in the year.
There is little belief of the possibility that Avatar: The Way of Water will be able to surpass the original movie, but it does not need to become the most-grossing production ever in order to be a hit. The anticipation surrounding the sequel has mostly quelled the notion that Avatar was not able to leave a lasting impression on the general public. Even if the sequel's box office is half as much as the first film however, it will still earn $1.3 billion and that would make Avatar 2's billion-dollar box office a huge success. It's enough to make it the second highest-grossing movie in 2022.
There's there is a lot of pressure to the Avatar 2 box-office to be successful enough that it will keep Cameron's sequel plans alive. He is attached to produce three sequels which will include Avatar 3 already completely filmed. There is also some work being done to make Avatar 4. However, Avatar: The Way Of Water Review has acknowledged that in the event that the sequel's box-office falls short and the audience is not at all interested, Avatar 3 could be the last movie in the franchise. In this way, Avatar The Way of Water's box-office will play a major influence on what's the next James Cameron's films.