‘Avatar: The Way of Water’Box Office News

Avatar: The Way Of Water’ Failed To Top The Box Office In This 1 Country

20th Century Studios/Disney’s Avatar: The Way of Water made $14.3M yesterday, ranking it as the second best Wednesday of 2022 after Top Gun: Maverick‘s $14.8M on June 1. Avatar 2‘s first Wednesday also bested that of Minions: Rise of Gru ($13.5M, July 6) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s first and second Wednesdays ($8.1M Nov 16 and $10M on Nov. 23).

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What’s interesting here is that from Sunday through midweek, Avatar 2 is playing like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, yesterday not being that far from that Lucasfilm prequel’s $14.96M Wednesday. That said, Avatar: The Way of Water at $183M through six days is pacing 11% behind Rogue One in its domestic running total.

Filmmaker James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” has been a box office smash and has reportedly raked in $550 million in ticket sales around the world.

One country, however, wasn’t as generous with its love for the sequel to the highest-grossing movie of all time. The movie came in second among earners at the Japanese box office last weekend in a release that reportedly saw a number of technical errors at screenings in the country.

What the sequel was the largest opening for a film in Japan with 1,466 screens playing it this past weekend, an amount that topped the number of screens that showed the 2012 film “The Amazing Spider-Man” in Japan on opening weekend.

The movie premiered in a range of viewing experiences in Japan. However, theaters were reportedly not equipped for its 48-frames-per-second frame rate.

Chains including Tohol Col allegedly gave refunds to “Avatar” fans as a result of issues at theaters, Bloomberg reported, and one theater reduced the frame rate from 48 fps to the standard 24 fps in the middle of the three-hour-plus movie.

“The First Slam Dunk,” based on the popular “Slam Dunk” basketball manga series, was the top title at the Japanese box office over Saturday and Sunday with $4.13 million while “Avatar: The Way of Water” scored $3.6 million over the two days, although with previews it earned $3.9 million, the publication noted.

“The First Slam Dunk,” along with the anime fantasy movie “Suzume,” also trumped the sequel in terms of the number of ticket sales and earned the top two spots among attended film screenings in Japan last weekend, according to the publication.

Universal also debuted Dreamworks Animation’s sequel Puss in Boots: The Last Wish to $3.2M at 4,093 theaters. The Joel Crawford-Januel Mercado directed movie received an A CinemaScore, a notch up from the A- of the first 2011 movie which opened over the final weekend of October, typically a death zone at the box office, to a robust $34M. While Puss in Boots 2 is under the first pre-Christmas Wednesday opening of Sing 2 which did $8.1M before a 5-day of $39.6M, realize we’re still in a corridor where audiences’ moviegoing is being sidelined by holiday activities. All of this changes on Christmas Day Sunday for the better. Universal is looking at long run here for Puss in Boots 2. The studio rode out Sing 2 all the way to the first weekend of April in north of 2,000 theaters. Throughout every weekend in March, Sing 2 was grossing over $1M every weekend late in its run. Impressive. Final domestic was $162.8M.

Avatar 3’ And ‘Avatar 4’ Scenes Shot To Avoid Cast Members Ageing-Out

As Avatar: The Way of Water continues to blow up worldwide, James Cameron has indicated he’s game-planning far into the future.

Writer-director Cameron said that he’s shot scenes from a proposed Avatar 3 and Avatar 4 concurrently with the recently released sequel. He did so to avoid having the younger cast members age-out, bringing up Netflix’s Stranger Things as an example of the problem of time marching on.

The Way of Water introduces Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, who was 7 years old when cast and is now 13) and Spider (Jack Champion, who was 12 when cast, but is now 18). Because Champion was “growing like a weed,” the second, third, and first act of the fourth movie had to be done in one production, Cameron said.

“Otherwise, you get–and I love Stranger Things–but you get the Stranger Things effect, where they’re supposed to still be in high school [but] they look like they’re 27,” Cameron said. “You know, I love the show. It’s okay, we’ll suspend disbelief. We like the characters. But, you know.”

Producer Jon Landau also revealed in the same article that upcoming films will feature new biomes. “Each movie is going to introduce audiences to new clans, new cultures on Pandora,” Landau said. “Once we introduce a character, they stay a part of the ongoing evolution. We just add to it. So you can expect to see the Metkayina that you meet in this movie in subsequent movies. There are other clans that we’ll introduce in movie 3 that you’ll see in movie 4 and so on and so forth.”

So far, Avatar: The Way of Water has generated $168 million domestically and more than $500 million worldwide.