‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Lifts Off With $345 Million Global Opening Weekend

Disney/20th Century/Lightstorm’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is leading what has been a fruitful pre-Christmas weekend at the box office, leading the charts with an $88 million domestic opening and $345 million worldwide.

While that’s well short of the $134 million domestic/$434.5 million global opening of “Avatar: The Way of Water” in 2022 and likely rules out “Avatar” becoming the first franchise ever with three $2 billion installments, this launch should be enough to make “Fire and Ash” the highest grossing Hollywood film of the year, albeit second to the $2 billion Chinese animated film “Ne Zha 2.”

That’s because “Avatar 3” is expected to take advantage of the holidays to leg out well past the rest of this year’s offerings. With premium format screenings expected to be filled up over the next two weeks and the historically slower Christmas Eve falling on a Wednesday this year, “Fire and Ash” should leg out to at least $400 million domestic and $1.6 billion worldwide.

Taking second is Angel’s “David,” which has set a new studio record with a $22 million from 3,318 locations, passing the $19.6 million of the 2023 indie hit “Sound of Freedom.”

Touting $15 million in presales, “David” positioned itself not only as a can’t-miss film for faith-based audiences, but one that unlike major studio animated family films released in this weekend slot was a film that they couldn’t wait until Christmas to see.

While it’s unclear whether the strong word-of-mouth for “David” will extend beyond Christian and Jewish families, the holiday period should give the film more than enough room to pass the $60.2 million domestic run of Angel’s Easter 2025 animated success “The King of Kings.” If it achieves a 4x multiple, then it it will have passed the $72.9 million domestic run of Pixar’s “Elio.”

Lionsgate’s “The Housemaid” takes third with a $19 million opening from 3,015 locations. With an opening weekend audience that was 70% female and 75% over the age of 25, this Sydney Sweeney/Amanda Seyfried thriller is hoping to get strong turnout and repeat screenings from a specific demographic.

While audience reception looked initially bumpy with a B on CinemaScore, the audience score at Rotten Tomatoes has reached 92% to go with a 75% critics score.

More to come…

The post ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Lifts Off With $345 Million Global Opening Weekend appeared first on TheWrap.