Weekend projections: Avatar shows first sign of fatigue on generally strong MLK weekend

January 15, 2023

Avatar: The Way of Water

Avatar: The Way of Water will easily win at the box office over the MLK long weekend, with Disney projecting a three-day weekend in the region of $31.1 million, and $38.5 million over four days, which will take it to $570 million domestically. With another $1.331 billion internationally, that should put it on $1.894 billion worldwide by close of business on Sunday. It should pass Spider-Man: No Way Home to become the 6th-highest grossing movie of all time worldwide in the next couple of days. So there’s no bad news here, but the film is finally showing signs of slowing down in North America.

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



Our prediction for Avatar for the weekend was based on two models. Our traditional model (based on the performance of all movies released in the pandemic era) predicted it would make $34.1 million. A model based on the performance of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the original Avatar predicted $41.6 million. Needless to say, $31 million looks a lot more like $34.1 million than it does $41.6 million. In other words, Way of Water is performing a lot more like a “normal” movie this weekend.

It’s still doing just fine though. While our models predicted it would earn a little over $800 million domestically going into this weekend, they are now converging on $770 million as its final total in North America. That’s still spectacularly successful, and would make it the fifth-highest grossing movie of all time here. It’s currently earning $2.36 for every dollar it earns in North America, and if it keeps up that pace it’ll end up with just over $2.5 billion worldwide, enough to make it the third-highest grossing film of all time.

The rest of the top 10 looks almost universally in great shape this weekend. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish in particular is taking advantage of the long weekend and will earn almost as much this weekend as it did last weekend. In fact, it’ll earn more this weekend than it did when it opened back on December 23. It will pass $100 million domestically in the process.

M3GAN is also doing better than predicted on its second weekend, falling a very respectable 41% to $17.9 million for $56.4 million in total.

While they’re not setting records, all the new wide releases are doing somewhat better than predicted, led by Plane, which arrives with $10.004 million per Lionsgate. House Party’s $3.9 million is also just fine.

That all adds up to a projected $94.9 million for the top 10, and probably a shade over $100 million for the market as a whole over three days once all the numbers are in. That will make 2023 the first year to top $100 million over its first three weekends since the pre-pandemic days of 2020, which is an encouraging sign that the market is still growing.

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

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Bruce Nash,