James Cameron’s third installment in his groundbreaking Avatar series minted green at multiplexes around the globe over the weekend as the year-end holiday box office commenced in earnest.
Avatar: Fire And Ash, from 20th Century and Disney, amassed $345 million in its worldwide opening, the second-best global opening of any 2025 Hollywood title behind fellow Disney Thanksgiving tentpole Zootopia 2.
Fire and Ash was never expected to match the $441.6 million launch of the 2022 sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, but the drop-off was somewhat worse than expected. One surprise in particular; it came in on the lower end of expectations in North America with $88 million. Threequels also face challenges, even when it comes Pandora. The goal now is to make up ground over the lucrative year-end holidays, when a five or six multiple is entirely possible.
The mega-budget film is earning strong audience exits, including an A CinemaScore, in line with the two previous films — despite its running time of more than three and a quarter hours. Disney insiders say this puts the threequel in the driver’s seat, noting additionally that PostTrak exit scores are an exceptional 4 out 5.
The first Avatar movie was all but lambasted when it opened to $77 million in 2009, considering its cost, but the angst soon ended as the film picked up momentum on its way to becoming the top-grossing film of all time at the worldwide box office with an astounding $2.97 billion, not adjusted for inflation. It still holds that honor, followed by Marvel’s: Avengers: Endgame and two more Cameron titles, Way of Water and Titanic, which earned north of $2.3 billion.
The Avatar series has always drawn much of its strength from overseas, and early signs have Disney and Cameron’s Lightstorm beaming. Imax, whose technology the filmmaker has always relied on, ponied up $43.6 million of the opening weekend global gross to mark Imax’ biggest opening weekend of the year and among its fifth biggest openings ever. All told, Imax and other premium formats accounted for 56 percent of all tickets sold (Cameron is making a huge push to see the pic in Imax 3D).
In terms of the foreign box office, Fire and Ash displayed resilience not only across English-speaking markets and Europe, but also pulled in big numbers in Asia, including South Korea and — perhaps most notably — China, which has embraced yet another Hollywood tentpole following the record-smashing success of Zootopia 2. In regards to Avatar 3, China led all markets with a debut of $57.6 million, ahead of the last film.
Two movies that could be collectively dinging Fire and Ash are the faith-based David, from the faith-based Angel Studios, and Lionsgate’s R-rated thriller The Housemaid, starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney.
David debuted to in second place to $22 million from 3,119 theaters in a company-best for Angel after earning an A CinemaScore.
The Housemaid followed in third place with $19 million. The film, a throwback to the thrillers of the 1990s, could be a key test for Sweeney following her failed Oscar hopeful, Christy, and launched in third place with $19 million.
Also opening nationwide over the Dec. 19-21 weekend was Paramount’s family pic The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, followed in fourth place with $16 million from 3,557 theaters.
And at the specialty box office, A24’s Oscar hopeful Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet, celebrated breaking into the top 10 despite playing in just six theaters. The sports biopic earned an estimated $875,000 to serve up a record-breaking per-screen average of $145,933, the highest in A24’s history and among the best ever.
Among specialty holdovers, Focus Features’ awards contender Hamnet, produced by Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes, among others, rounded out the top 10 and saw its domestic tally grow to $8.2 million.
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