From the Disney movie “Avatar: Fire and Ash”.
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disney James Cameron’s third Avatar film, “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” opened in theaters on Thursday, grossing $12 million in domestic preview screenings.
The second film in the film series, The Way of Water, is off to a good start, grossing more than $5 million in Thursday screenings in 2022. Still, box office analysts expect Fire and Ashes to gross at least $100 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada.
“There’s a lot riding on the performance of ‘Avatar: Fire and Ashes,’ and with less than two weeks left in the year, the film’s performance will play a pivotal role in shaping the year’s box office totals,” Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at ComScore, told CNBC.
The international market is driving global ticket sales, with preview screenings raising $43.1 million.
“The circumstances surrounding each Avatar movie are completely different,” said Sean Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founder of Box Office Theory. “The first is the sleeper phenomenon that occurred during the streaming box office heyday, the second benefited from pent-up demand for sequels and the eventful nature of the post-COVID-19 box office recovery, and the third is now being released in a more competitive new normal market.”
The Avatar series is a Hollywood unicorn. Despite being a huge success with widespread reviews and box office success, the series has not quite captured the cultural relevance that Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, also owned by Disney, have enjoyed. Toy sales have slumped, and few cosplayers wear dark blue makeup at pop culture fan conventions.
Still, 2009’s Avatar and 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water both grossed more than $2 billion at the global box office, with the first film’s ticket revenue hovering near $3 billion.
“What hasn’t changed is the James Cameron element,” Robbins said. “When audiences buy a ticket to one of his films, they expect spectacular visuals, sound and storytelling. Long box office runways and special theatrical windows consistently meet or exceed expectations because they provide an experience that cannot be replicated at home.”
Driving this strong sales is the sale of premium large-format tickets for screens such as IMAX, Dolby, and 3D screenings, which tend to be more expensive than regular tickets.
Although 3D movies are no longer popular with domestic audiences, they are still popular internationally, especially in China. In fact, “Avatar” earned the majority of its revenue outside the United States, with a whopping $2.08 billion coming from overseas.
Dergarabedian said the series has always benefited from moviegoers’ enthusiasm for seeing movies in 3D.
“The original Avatar, released in 2009, was a groundbreaking film that reignited widespread interest in 3D movies and set the stage for subsequent films to capitalize on this trend,” he added.
China was not included in the international preview sales shared by Disney on Friday. The company notes that early estimates are for an opening-day box office gross of approximately $17.1 million, making it the third-highest opening-day gross for a Motion Picture Association film since “The Way of Water.”
“‘Fire and Ashes’ has had lower opening box office receipts than ‘The Road of Water,’ but it’s all about the long game,” Robbins said. “With premium screens locked in until the new year and Cameron’s film not being brought forward like most Hollywood franchises, the international box office will once again far outpace the domestic.”
