James Cameron’s big-budget 3D sci-fi sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water” hits almost all of the world’s cinemas this weekend and is set to shake up the box-office in the process.
Deadline reports that the film is currently on track for a worldwide opening weekend haul of $525 million thanks to being Disney’s widest global release ever across 52,000 screens.
Of that, $175 million of that is expected to come from North America, with double that amount coming from international markets ($100 million of which is expected from China).
That’s just early projections too. The week of projections for “Spider-Man: No Way Home” last year were around the $350 million worldwide mark, and the film ended up taking in a $600 million haul in its debut.
Whether such a jump will be repeated here is not clear. The franchise skews a little older than Marvel, and the 192-minute runtime will limit showings on any given day. Also Cameron’s film is expected to have holding power as his films always have in this release corridor.
Disney also has major and premium auditoriums booked out for the next five weekends for the film, which has no real blockbuster challengers until Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” on February 17th.
