There’s little doubt that people have become obsessed with “the numbers” at the box office. Domestic numbers, worldwide numbers, total box office gross, comparing them to other films, etc. Filmgoers and critics have boiled down the success or failure of a movie to its numbers, and it shows every time a big movie comes out. One such film has arrived in Avatar: The Way Of Water. The sequel, 13-plus years in the making, is out right now via preview showings in theaters. While it’s impossible to know the first numbers yet, the estimates paint an interesting picture of what’s coming.
According to Deadline, the preview night shows gained about $17 million. That doesn’t tell us much on its own, so let’s compare it to other 2022 films. The last big movie release, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, did $28 million when it opened its previews. Earlier in 2022, The Batman did a little more than $17 million.
At first, you might think that this means it will do more along the lines of the latter film than the former in terms of box office gross. But there’s a big catch here. Avatar: The Way Of Water has a runtime of over three hours! The other two movies mentioned had less than three hours of runtime. So for James Cameron’s sequel to be doing that well despite the longer runtime? That’s pretty impressive.
As we noted earlier in the week, the projections for the film are incredibly high. It’s expected to make about $175 million domestically and $350 million internationally. If those numbers hold, that’s a half billion in revenue in the first week, which is impressive for any movie.
Another thing to note is the critical and audience scores. While the critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes has fallen a bit since our last article, it’s still at 80% across 200+ reviews, which is a very solid number. Currently, the audience rating is at 96%. That’s across 500 reviews, and the review number will go up as the weekend goes along, so it’ll be interesting to see how the percentage rises or falls based on that.
The final thing to remember is that unlike many of the films in 2022, when they had their big releases, Avatar: The Way Of Water isn’t going to have major competition for a long time. That means it could do what the previous film in its franchise did, rake in the money over the holiday season, and have a big gross by the end of its theatrical run.
Source: Deadline
