James Cameron has been telling multiple outlets that “Avatar: Fire and Ash” has to make a lot of money for the franchise to continue.
Of course, with a $400M+ budget on ‘Fire and Ash,’ which does not include marketing costs, it will likely need to earn just over $1 billion just to turn a profit. I’d bet it’s a lot more than that.
‘Fire and Ash’ hits theaters on Friday, and with mixed reviews having hit yesterday, attention will be fully paid to its receipts this weekend. Here’s Deadline reporting that the film stands to earn $380M globally by Sunday evening. Not bad. Let’s remember, ‘The Way of Water’ nabbed a $445M global opening weekend. Is Avatar fatigue upon us?
Still, if that $380M number sticks, it’ll place ‘Fire and Ash’ as the second-best opening of 2025, behind “Zootopia 2” ($560M).
What’s of major concern is that ‘Fire and Ash’ is currently projected for a $100M domestic opening, which lags behind its predecessor’s $134M debut. Currently, domestic presales for ‘Fire and Ash’ are pacing 30% behind that of ‘Way of Water.’
Of course, it should be mentioned that the first two “Avatar” movies had major legs. They had minimal week-to-week drops during the Christmas break, and Disney’s hoping that’ll again be the case with ‘Fire and Ash,’ but word of mouth is not that strong this time around.
“Avatar: The Way of Water” is the third highest-grossing movie of all time, earning $2.3 billion back in 2022/2023. There’s no guarantee ‘Fire and Ash’ will gross that kind of money, but expectations are that if anybody can prove doubters wrong, it’s James Cameron — the man behind three of the four highest-grossing films of all time.