Avatar: Fire and Ash is about to stir up Pandora and Na'vi fever around the world once again. In the next 48 hours the film will be released in virtually every market worldwide, and from advance ticket sales (thank you, Deadline) we can already see that it is set to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars. But will it be enough?
The first predictions based on pre-release ticket sales today in Germany, France, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Korea and the United States, along with the territories of China, the United Kingdom, Japan, India and Spain, where it will be released on Friday, estimate that it will make a first weekend of between 340 and 380 million dollars, making it the second best opening of 2025, only behind Zootropolis 2.
Any other film would be popping the champagne of success by now, but not James Cameron's franchise. Avatar 3, if these predictions come true, would be slightly behind Avatar: The Sense of Water, which managed to gross 30% more in its first days in the US market. It also doesn't help that critics are far less impressed with the sequel this time around (we ourselves have a very thorough, spoiler-free review debating it), and that they rank it on Rotten Tomatoes as the least appealing of the three films, with a current 71% rating (Avatar scored 81% and Avatar: The Sense of Water scored 76%).
However, with Christmas still quite a few days away, and national holidays in many territories for the New Year's festivities, Avatar: Fire and Ash can still manage to surpass its predecessor (which grossed $2.34 billion, making it the third highest-grossing film in history).
If James Cameron wants to leverage that footage into a hypothetical Avatar 4 and Avatar 5, 'Fire and Ash' has to reach at least $2 billion. Good luck, Jake Sully.