Weekend predictions: $61.5 million is the target for Avatar over the Holiday weekend

December 23, 2022

A bevy of new films arrives in theaters for Christmas, but none are expected to put pressure on Avatar: The Way of Water over the weekend. Here are our (abbreviated) predictions for the weekend…

Our prediction for The Way of Water comes from a comparison with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which opened on December 16, 2016, the weekend before Christmas the last time the holiday fell on a Sunday. The daily performance of the two films has tracked fairly closely over the past few days:

Rogue One did much better from previews than The Way of Water, but otherwise the two films have been fairly close each day, with just 4% between them on average. There’s no obvious trendline, other than a dip for Avatar yesterday, most likely because of the poor weather over the Central United States. If that storm keeps people home through the weekend, then Avatar might end up with around $55 million. The par score for the film based on the comparison is $61.5 million.

The bottom line is that under normal circumstances anything under $60 million would be slightly troubling for The Way of Water, and anything over $65 million would be good. But the weather conditions could cause a miss on the low end simply because people can’t get to theaters, or because power outages or staff shortages shut down the theaters themselves. So a $55-million weekend wouldn’t be a death knell if traffic picks up as the snow is cleared. Topping $65 million under these conditions would be a great result.

Rogue One, by the way, made $533 million domestically. That’s a good benchmark for Avatar: The Way of Water at the moment.

Here’s what our model thinks the top 10 as a whole will look like.

Our model struggles a bit with predictions over the Holidays, to be honest. That’s because it is based solely on previous records, and that leaves it without much to go on.

The figure for Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is influenced quite heavily by the opening for the original Puss in Boots, even though that film opened 11 years ago. The new film hasn’t didn’t post huge figures on Wednesday and Thursday, which brings the prediction down quite a bit.

Our number for Babylon is based in large part on Damien Chazelle’s track record. In particular the fact that First Man opened with $16 million is an encouraging precedent. Unfortunately, the buzz around Babylon is (surprisingly) muted, and a sub-$10 million opening seems quite likely.

I Wanna Dance with Somebody earned $730,000 from previews on Thursday, which is very similar to Respect’s $650,000 last year. If the Whitney Houston biopic continues to track on those lines it’ll most likely fall short of $10 million too.

Bruce Nash

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Puss in Boots, Avatar: The Way of Water, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Babylon, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Damien Chazelle