Weekend projections: Way of Water officially projected to earn $134 million this weekend

December 18, 2022

Avatar: The Way of Water

Disney are projecting a $134-million opening weekend for Avatar: The Way of Water this morning, the best opening weekend for James Cameron in his career, and the sixth-best debut of 2022. Final numbers could move it fractionally ahead of The Batman and into fifth for the year, but it’s a slightly disappointing result, given that most predictions had it earning around $150 million this weekend. On the bright side, international numbers are looking a bit better, with $301 million so far, and its legs are looking promising.

Here’s how the domestic numbers looked as of Sunday morning (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting so far)…



The overall trend line for Avatar has been encouraging through the weekend.



After falling behind a little on Friday, its Saturday and Sunday numbers have been strong compared to this year’s other blockbuster openers. There’s just a hint here that Disney is lowballing Sunday’s number a touch, but either way it looks as though the film is getting good word of mouth so far. In particular, note that the only other film in the above list to earn as much on Sunday as it did on Friday is Top Gun: Maverick, which is exactly what the studio is hoping for.

All told, it looks as though Way of Water has done enough this weekend, and is showing the kind of positive word of mouth and early legs that it needs to be a financial success domestically.

Internationally, the film is doing just fine too. It’ll have the highest opening weekend of all time in Lithuania and Turkey, and the second-best opening ever in Romania and the Czech Republic. Among major markets, it’ll post the fifth-best weekend of all time in Germany with $19.9 million. Other major territories so far are China with $57.1 million, Korea with $24.7 million, France $19.3 million, India $18.1m, United Kingdom $14.2m, Mexico $12.9m, Australia $10.8m, and Italy with $10.2m. A full rundown of international markets can be found here.

- Studio weekend projections
- All-time biggest weekends
- All-time top-grossing movies in North America
- All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: James Cameron