20th Century Studios/Disney’s Avatar: The Way of Water splashed out with another $37.1M at the international box office on Thursday, leading to a running cume of $464M overseas. With domestic’s $14.5M Thursday gross, the global total is an estimated $661.4M. This portends a sophomore session that should bring James Cameron’s sequel to $800M+ worldwide through Sunday. One codicil here is the arctic weather that is affecting large swaths of the U.S.
Overseas, comps for opening Thursday last week versus this week are very strong, notably as World Cup play has finished. France is up 70%, and Germany 35%. Italy, which has been struggling overall, is down just 17% and Brazil is off by 22%.
With strong and consistent mid-weeks, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water has crested the $600M mark worldwide. This comes after it rapidly passed $500M global earlier this week, following its $441.6M opening weekend. The current worldwide total through Wednesday is $609.7M including $426.8M from the international box office.
The offshore cume lifts Way of Water to the No. 5 spot for a Hollywood title on the 2022 overseas chart, having now surpassed Thor: Love and Thunder and The Batman.
On Tuesday, the 20th Century Studios/Disney sequel added $40.5M from overseas markets, and on Wednesday, a further $39.5M.
Domestically, as Anthony has reported, Way of Water scored the 2nd biggest Wednesday of 2022.
International midweeks are landing at an average 15% of the opening weekend (removing troubled China from the equation, that rises to 17%). Looking at markets that bowed early last week, France’s Wednesday was up 64% this week (last Wednesday had a World Cup semi-final), Germany was also up, while Korea and Italy were down about 30%.
As we’re heading into a holiday weekend that sees Christmas Eve fall on a Saturday, and Christmas Day on a Sunday, we’ll see a significantly lighter second frame — but from December 26-30, midweeks are again expected to be robust.
In all, the Top 10 overseas markets through Wednesday are China ($70.5M), France ($37M), Korea ($32.1M), India ($26.5M), Germany ($26.1M), UK ($21.6M), Mexico ($19.4M), Australia ($15.8M), Italy ($13.8M) and Brazil ($12.9M).
Not included in the totals above are Thursday’s figures out of China and Korea. In the former, an added estimated $3.8M brings the total through today to $74.5M. In the latter, a $2.17M estimated Thursday lifts Way of Water to $34.7M.
avatar: the way of water (2022) pic.twitter.com/S4q9QqXZZ7
— . (@dotinglyricism) December 16, 2022
Cameron’s sequel to the 2009 sci-fi blockbuster “Avatar” didn’t appear to be affected by the disastrous winter storm that threw about 70% of the United States under severe weather warnings. The sequel, which took 13 years to make, will have to bring in about $2 billion just to break even, Cameron hinted.
On Thursday Canadian filmmaker James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way Of Water” shot up to a total of $661 million as of Thursday when it pulled in another $37.1 million at the international box office. With Americans unable to get to the theater due to a disastrous storm that has left 17 people dead, the film only brought in a domestic gross of $14.5 million as of Thursday.
But international earnings for the film have skyrocketed with a running cume of $464 million overseas. Though the arctic storm continues to hamper Americans, the movie could reach a gross earning of more than $800 million globally by Sunday, as the FIFA World Cup has come to an end, "Way of Water" could be an alternative source of entertainment.
Those high numbers are good news, because the “Avatar” sequel, which opened in theaters on December 16, will have to bring in as much money as possible just to break even, the director hinted. Cameron hasn’t revealed his budget for the film, but when asked about the budget simply said: “Very f****** expensive”. Some analysts have guessed it cost anywhere from $250 million to $460 million just to make.
The making of #AvatarTheWayOfWater pic.twitter.com/89LdfZOQFz
— Avatar Sequels (@avatarsequelsbr) December 24, 2022
Cameron had reportedly told Disney and 20th Century Studios executives that the film’s budget would put movie makers in the “worst business case in movie history”, and said the film would have to be “the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.”
But Cameron is not a novice when it comes to making one of the highest-grossing films worldwide. His first “Avatar” movie brought in more than $2.9 billion and ranks as the first highest-grossing film of all time. Meanwhile his 1997 film “Titanic” ranks third on that list with more than $2.2 billion. So for movie execs to choose to bankroll on Cameron doesn’t seem like such a big gamble, after all.
For now "Way of Water" sits at spot number five on the overseas chart for this year, passing "Thor: Love of Thunder" and "The Batman". While viewings could fall this weekend as people celebrate the holidays, ticket sales following Christmas are projected to rise significantly.
Avatar 2’ Bombs in China
With $661 million worldwide as of Thursday, and a possible end-of-weekend cume over/under $900 million global, Walt Disney and 20th Century Studios’ “Avatar: The Way of Water” is on its way to potentially becoming the year’s biggest global grosser. However, with just $80 million from China in eight days from a $57 million opening weekend (including a 78% drop on its second Friday), according to individuals with knowledge, James Cameron’s underwater 3-D epic is the latest big Hollywood movie to stumble in China. It’s also the latest Hollywood tentpole, think “Top Gun: Maverick” ($1.49 billion sans China) or “The Batman” (just $20 million out of $770 million from China), to earn top-tier global box office with almost no help from the Middle Kingdom.
There was an implicit hope that China might help make “Avatar 2” a hit there to continue the narrative that Hollywood could find fortune and glory in China. COVID-specific variables (which also included the lack of red carpet premieres and in-person promotion) may have been specific enough for “The Way of Water” to be considered an anomaly even as the movie ends up nowhere near the likes of “Avengers: Endgame” ($620 million in 2019), “The Fate of the Furious” ($390 million in 2017) or “Transformers: Age of Extinction” ($300 million in 2014).
“We may never know how the second Pandora-set picture would have performed in China had it opened in non-COVID circumstances,” stated attorney Stephen Saltzman. The head of the international entertainment group at the law firm Fieldfisher noted that the film’s opening weekend came soon after a lifting of COVID-specific restrictions and a rise in infections.
Whatever the reasons for the softer-than-hoped performance, the result merely continues a trend. After these last few years, Hollywood is, as previously reported by TheWrap, once again treating Chinese box office as a mere luxury.
Asian Studies Professor Deepak Sarma of Case Western Reserve University noted that “the financial allure of China is waning and Hollywood is a few steps behind.” He noted that tech companies are “moving out of China to Vietnam to diversify their manufacturing capabilities.”
As previously detailed, Hollywood’s share of Chinese box office has gone from a peak of $3.3 billion in 2017 to a likely finish of over/under $500 million in 2022, with the number of non-Chinese movies allowed there plummeting from a high of 73 in 2018 to under 30 this year. Fewer movies are getting in and those that do are (save for rare exceptions like “Godzilla vs. Kong,” which earned $188 million in 2021) earning less compared to pre-COVID times.
Meanwhile, Hollywood biggies like “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” ($965 million sans China) or “Minions: The Rise of Gru” ($37 million in China out of $935 million worldwide) are earning business-as-usual grosses everywhere else while Chinese tentpoles like “The Eight Hundred” ($460 million in 2020) or “Hi, Mom” ($835 million in 2021) pull in pre-COVID-level business in China.
Saltzman reminded TheWrap that “the notion of China saving failed Hollywood tentpoles was mostly a myth.” Indeed, even during the 2010s, films like “xXx: Return of Xander Cage” earning $164 million in China out of $385 million worldwide or “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter” grossing $159 million in China and $312 million worldwide are an exception to the rule. Most of the big Hollywood movies that broke out in China were the same MCU movies, “Jurassic” sequels and “Fast Saga” flicks that broke out worldwide.
Former DMG president Chris Fenton explained to TheWrap that “anything that comes from Hollywood is now, more so than any time within the last decade, explicitly seen by Beijing as propaganda from the West.” The author of “Feeding the Dragon: Inside the Trillion Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood, the NBA, & American Business further noted that even in-your-face “soft power” American propaganda like Tom Cruise’s “Top Gun” sequel and seemingly harmless rom-coms like “Crazy Rich Asians” (which show people living in comparative wealth and freedom and behaving as they couldn’t in China) are often looked at with stronger governmental or cultural disapproval.
“Case in point,” argued Fenton, “the Canadian-born James Cameron — who has done everything right over the past two decades to endear himself to China — and his latest “Avatar” sequel currently represents too much of America in the eyes of Beijing.”
“You play by the rules, look at the riches you’ll have,” noted Fenton, implicitly describing the tacit agreement between the two moviemaking superpowers in the previous decade. He also asserted that “Beijing feels they simply do not need Hollywood anymore, since they now have a thriving tentpole industry and keep all the revenue from the homegrown films.”
As such, even an overall decline in theatrical revenue (the first half of 2022 in China was down, in terms of overall theatrical earnings, 38% compared to 2021) may be considered an acceptable price to pay by the Chinese government for maintaining cultural supremacy and prioritizing their own tentpoles.
Part of the implied quid-pro-quo was in China using Hollywood interest to learn the tools of the filmmaking trade. China has been releasing its own culturally specific, big-budget, high-production value and crowdpleasers for nearly a decade. The success of “Wolf Warrior II” ($854 million in 2017) arguably signaled that China could do it for themselves, which is also the implicit subtext of Wu Jing’s “Chinese government operative saves Africa from genocidal arms dealers without America’s help” slam-bang action spectacular.
While some of these films were globally mainstream enough to act as potential cultural ambassadors, a change in priorities (and worsening tensions between America and China amid the Donald Trump presidency), caused China to begin emphasizing in-country patriotism over global proselytizing.
“Using cinema to project a culturally-specific image beyond its borders is not the same priority as it was before,” argued Saltzman. This could mean fewer conventionally/globally mainstream Chinese tentpoles like Jackie Chan’s “Kung Fu Yoga” or Yi-Mou Zhang’s “The Great Wall” — starring Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal — and more stereotypically nationalistic (but generally not jingoistic) quasi-propaganda war epics like the two-part, shot-in-IMAX “Battle of Lake Changjin” which earned $910 million in 2021 and $610 million in 2022.
The new normal going forward could be one of mutually-assured indifference. However, the (thus far) global box office success of “Avatar: The Way of Water” with a presumed under-$100 million total from China again shows that, especially when COVID conditions improve, China’s theatrical industry may need Hollywood blockbusters more than Tinseltown needs Chinese box office. That, just focusing on the theatrical moviegoing business, could result in neither industry unduly influencing the other.
“I want [Hollywood] to be a success, to be a bastion of freedom of speech and American/Western values, and it will again,” declared Fenton. He often expresses mixed feelings on his key role in bringing Hollywood, including the MCU, to China, having helped “Iron Man 3” become a trendsetter in the summer of 2013. “It’s important for our movies to resonate in China, but not at the expense of our own cultural values.”
