Some takeaways from the Friday numbers at the box office, which see numerous hits forming. A great start to 2026.
“Avatar: Fire and Ash,” which just surpassed the $1 billion mark, nabbed $14M on Friday and is projected to have a $40M weekend — just a 39% drop from last week. In the process, James Cameron has become the first director to helm four consecutive films that crossed the billion-dollar mark.
Current projections have the run ending anywhere between $1.5–$1.8 billion, which should be seen as an immense success in this day and age, despite falling well short of the $2.3 billion that “The Way of Water” accumulated in 2022/2023. Yes, the audience is shrinking for these “Avatar” movies, but there’s still a massive number of ticket buyers willing to pay their hard-earned money for James Cameron’s Pandora-set fantasies.
Meanwhile, “Zootopia 2” surprised many by climbing up the charts and returning to the top two. Being the main attraction for family-friendly entertainment this holiday season means it has taken up the mantle, now eyeing a $22M weekend in its sixth week of release. It is set to surpass the $600M mark in China this weekend and will be at $365M+ domestic. Its worldwide total is expected to reach $1.6 billion by next week.
And now, how about “The Housemaid”? What a sleeper hit this one has become. Budgeted at $35M, Paul Feig’s trashy thriller, starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney, is set not to dip at all in its third weekend. No, really — it earned $15M last weekend, and it’s set to earn $15M, maybe more, by late Sunday. An unbelievable hold that further proves just how powerful word of mouth was on BookTok, which has been hyping up the film and novel for weeks now.
It does help that the film is “good,” and I do need to put that in quotation marks, since what “The Housemaid” really is is utterly watchable, pulp-ish trash done right. The film is set to hit $100M worldwide by Sunday.
Finally, we have “Marty Supreme,” which the trades keep reporting cost $70M to produce — nonsense; its budget was $90M, and I heard that from several strong sources. Regardless, it’s looking at a $14M weekend after a $4.7M Friday. The film will hit $60M by Monday, if not earlier — oh, and it has yet to open in any international markets, which bodes very well for its final tally. Might we be looking at $200M worldwide? Maybe.
All in all, this has been a very promising start to 2026. Next week sees the release of two wide titles: “Greenland 2: Migration,” and “Primate” — not the buzziest titles, but sleeper hits sometimes happen in January, and even if they don’t, ‘Avatar’ has a history of picking up the slack.