‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’ Takes $91 Million In Early Global Openings

James Cameron’s long-awaited sequel to 2009’s chart-topping Avatar has arrived, and early numbers point to another major box office result and widespread acclaim for Avatar: The Way of Water. The film took $91 million worldwide in early previews and first-day attendance since Wednesday and Thursday evenings, including $17 million in North America and $23.5 million in China so far. Read my full review here.

Almost a quarter of presales are for post-opening-weekend screenings, with opening day and previews repping only around half of presales. This means audiences are getting their tickets in advance for days later in theatrical run and points to big weekly holds and long legs through the holiday season, as expected.

But don’t think this all adds up to a small or disappointing opening weekend. While some will spin the domestic number as if it’s disappointing, it’s not. Demographics were overwhelmingly adult men for the previews, while families and women audiences are expected to turn out in much higher numbers across full weekend days.

Avatar: The Way of Water is still on course for a $180-200 million domestic opening, and a massive $500-600 million global bow. Even the lowest end of estimates will put the film in an excellent position to pass the $1 billion mark soon, and the Christmas and New Year holidays will ensure continued strong and long play.

In an interesting side note, even the World Cup and the arrival of Avatar 2 didn’t suppress Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s ability to hold well as it heads into the weekend. We’ll see if this remains true as the weekend progresses, but for now it appears the Marvel super-sequel had relatively small slides on Wednesday and Thursday. That could change, however, as the weekend kicks in and crowds flood multiplexes for The Way of Water. As it stands, Wakanda Forever has topped $772+ million and should still make its way to $800 million as the holiday tides lift all boats.

With high audience scores and great word of mouth, as well as strong turnout among Latino, Black, and Asian viewers who combined for more than half of all domestic audiences so far, Avatar: The Way of Water is playing well across all demos. Critics are still high on the film, although reviews from the last two days have slightly reduced the overall Rotten Tomatoes score from the 80% range into high-70% territory.

But those later more mixed reviews won’t matter to audiences. The tremendous word of mouth is already out, reviews are still overwhelmingly positive, and I have no doubt most viewers are going to share a sense of wonder and excitement for the film. This doesn’t negative the validity of opinions from those who dislike the film, it just means those negative viewpoints won’t harm the film’s reception, reputation, or revenue.

And this all raises a big important point: all of the years of talk about Avatar lacking social footprint, lacking staying power, lacking public awareness or interest, and not having much to justify its existence on merit are washed away as easily as sand on a beach. It was always empty rhetoric, silly and clickbaity, and we’re seeing the definitive proof of that as Avatar: The Way of Water becomes a massive box office, critical, and audience hit as of course it was always likely to be.

The phrase “never bet against James Cameron” isn’t some blind mantra or fan-based wishful thinking. At some point, those who act skeptical need to recognize that time and again, the same voices offering the same talking points decade after decade have been proven wrong. We can look back at The Terminator, at Aliens, at Titanic, at Avatar, and now at Avatar: The Way of Water and see the same mistaken assessments and the same eagerness to see Cameron and his films collapse amid a pile of hubris and humiliation, and every time the films rose to the occasion and exceeded expectations. There’s a point at which a smart, honest person stops banging a broken drum to the same pitchless tune.

That doesn’t mean everyone should like the films or jump on a bandwagon for them. It just means if you keep proclaiming “nobody will care, it will fail” and then make excuses for why you’re wrong instead of admitting you consistently underestimate a filmmaker, then at some point everybody will stop listening to you because you aren’t offering film criticism or analysis, you’re offering resentful wish-fantasies about a filmmaker you want to see fail just to prove you aren’t always wrong. But you are, at least in this case, and you can dislike him or his films (which is fine and fair subjective opinion) without letting it blind you to reality or turn you into an angry voice raging and sitting into the wind.

Avatar: The Way of Water has probably already topped $100 million at the box office while I’m writing this, and it’s not even the first full day of release around the world. The three biggest days are still yet to come. The massive audience turnout is only just about to start. The core audience who will revisit the film over and over in theaters are now gearing up to arrive. And Christmas is just around the corner, so James Cameron is going to get a nice, big present again from audiences.