“Avatar: Fire and Ash” is towering over the domestic box office during the first weekend of the new year.
James Cameron’s latest Na’vi adventure has collected 40 million dollars from 3825 North American theaters in its third weekend of release, declining 35% from the busy post-Christmas frame. Those ticket sales are pushing the third “Avatar” to 306 million dollars domestically and 1.08 billion dollars globally after just 18 days in theaters. “Fire and Ash” crossed the coveted billion-dollar benchmark slower than 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which took 14 days, and the original “Avatar,” which took 17 days. Now it’s a matter of where “Avatar: Fire and Ash” will top out at the box office — and whether the third installment has the stamina to surpass 2 billion dollars like its predecessors.
Since January is often glacial in terms of movie theater attendance, Hollywood studios barely release anything new around the dawn of the new year. That means a smattering of Thanksgiving and Christmas leftovers, such as “Zootopia 2,” “The Housemaid” and “Marty Supreme,” were behind “Avatar: Fire and Ash” on North American charts.
