James Cameron’s third Avatar movie has opened with a disappointing weekend at the box office, despite looming over the other movies hoping to draw in theatergoers during the holiday season.
Avatar: Fire and Ash kicked off with a $88 million domestic debut — meaning the blockbuster soared above its rival releases of Sydney Sweeney’s thrillerThe Housemaid and Angel Studios’ animated musical David, but fell short of its projected $100 million mark.
The newest installment in the sci-fi epic series had big shoes to fill after 2022 sequel Avatar: The Way of Water’s opening weekend hit $134 million. However, there’s still a chance that Cameron’s third trip to Pandora will catch up to its predecessors: the franchise is known for keeping good numbers during theater runs, as well as performing well globally. Avatar: Fire and Ash has already landed a massive $345 million and is expected to follow the franchise’s slow burn pattern.
The first two Avatar movies did not immediately skyrocket to popularity at their own opening weekends, and instead found success in the movie’s staying power. The original 2009 movie Avatar only debuted to $77 million domestically, but went on to remain the top movie for seven weekends in a row. The film ended up making $2.92 billion globally and is still the highest-grossing film of all time worldwide. The sequel also held onto its top spot for seven consecutive weekends and brought in $688 million domestically and $2.3 billion globally, making it the third highest-grossing film ever.
Meanwhile, the second most popular movie in American theaters over the weekend was Angel Studios’ David, a family-friendly movie about the Biblical story of David and Goliath. The movie made $22 million over three days at 3,119 theaters, marking a record high for the faith-based studio after its previous peak during Sound of Freedom’s $19.7 million opening in 2023.
David also smashed the box office record for the biggest opening weekend in history for a faith-based animated movie, beating out The King of Kings, the studio’s own feature from earlier this year that brought in $19.4 million. Before this year, the beloved DreamWorks movie The Prince of Egypt had held the record for the category’s biggest debut for 27 years.
After Avatar: Fire and Ash and David, thriller book-to-film adaptation The Housemaid landed the third best opening weekend with $19 million domestically, and Paramount’sThe SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants kicked off its run with $16 million.
