We haven’t seen this kind of box office domination since, well, since Avatar.
For the seventh consecutive weekend, Avatar: The Way of Water remained the Number 1 movie at the North American box office with $15.7 million. No movie has had a 7-week reign since 2009’s Avatar.
That now brings the blockbuster’s domestic haul to a mighty $620 million, good enough for 11th all-time in the US / Canada. It will move into the Top 10 within the week when it passes the $623M total for the original The Avengers.
Even more notable, Avatar 2 has become the 4th highest grossing movie of all time worldwide with a massive $2.11 billion, passing Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($2.07B). It’s only the sixth movie ever to cross the vaunted $2 billion barrier.
But perhaps most impressively, now three of the top four grossing movies in history belong to director James Cameron, including Avatar which still remains #1 globally with $2.92B. Cameron’s epic Oscar-winner Titanic is at #3 with $2.2B, and it looks to add to that total when Paramount gives Titanic a 25th Anniversary 3D re-release in theaters starting on Friday Feb. 10. Even so, Avatar 2 should pass it sometime in February.
Avengers: Endgame is now the only non-Cameron movie in the Top 4 worldwide, sitting comfortably at #2 all-time with $2.8B.
Meanwhile, a couple of arthouse movies got a boost from the recent Academy Award nominations. Everything Everywhere All At Once, which leads the Oscar race with 11 nominations including Best Picture, saw its modest return to theaters bring in $1 million, while fellow Best Picture nominee Women Talking expanded to more screens nationwide to the tune of $1.07 million.
Other Best Picture nominees that also saw a slight uptick of attendance in limited release: The Banshees of Inisherin ($352K), TÁR ($173K), Elvis ($154K) and Steven Spielberg‘s The Fabelmans ($760K).
Rounding out the domestic Top 5 were Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which continues to play strong at #2 with $10.6 million ($140.8M total), Tom Hanks‘s A Man Called Otto at #3 with $6.75M ($46M total), horror hit M3GAN at 4 with $6.37M ($82.2M total), and the India action import Pathaan at 5 with $5.9M ($8.5M total).
Next week, M. Night Shyamalan‘s R-rated thriller Knock At The Cabin will look to unseat Avatar: The Way of Water when it opens nationwide as the juggernaut’s first formidable contender.