Disney's 'Avatar 2' leads for seventh week, becomes global No. 4 all-time
Avatar: The Way of Water (NYSE:DIS) led the box office for a seventh straight weekend and became the fourth-highest grossing picture globally of all time.
The film - itself a sequel to the all-time worldwide leader Avatar - grossed $15.7M in North America, still a solid margin over the weekend's No. 2 picture, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (NASDAQ:CMCSA), with $10.6M.
Avatar 2's performance brought it to a cumulative domestic total of $620.6M, still just 11th of all time in domestic terms (behind The Avengers with $623.4M and Jurassic World with $653.4M).
But on a worldwide basis, it hit $2.117B, good enough to pass the $2.071B from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Next in its sights is the No. 3 global film of all time: Titanic, with $2.195B.
Only three films in the past 25 years have spent seven straight weeks topping the box office, and they're all directed by James Cameron: Avatar 2, Avatar, and Titanic. (They are respectively No. 4, No. 1 and No. 3 on the all-time worldwide box office chart.)
Rounding out the weekend's top five were A Man Called Otto (SONY) at No. 3 with $6.8M; M3GAN (CMCSA) at No. 4 with $6.4M; and Indian hit Pathaan (Yash Raj) with $5.95M.
The week also brought a record Chinese New Year performance for IMAX (NYSE:IMAX), which drew $34M over the six-day holiday - up 54% over last year, and beating its 2021 record high by 3%.
IMAX's China network fully reopened less than two months ago after COVID-19-related shutdowns. Overall Chinese box office year-to-date is now $1.2B, vs. about $513M for North America.
Can Avatar 2 lead for an eighth straight outing? This weekend, there are two new openings looking to steal the lead: M. Night Shyamalan's apocalyptic horror Knock at the Cabin (CMCSA), and quarterback-themed sports comedy 80 for Brady (PARA) (PARAA).
Cinema tickers: AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC); Cineworld (OTCPK:CNNWQ); Cinemark (CNK); (IMAX); Marcus (MCS); Reading International (RDI); Cineplex (CGX:CA); National CineMedia (NCMI).