It's here!

Avatar: The Way of Water- 165m

190 million

And we all doubted Mr Cameron. The rel GOAT

183m.

$25M/$50M/$65M/$53M for about $193M weekend. Would be nice to see it go over $200M though.

Not sure I am sensing a huge rush factor for this, so I'll go with $175m opening (and monster legs)

$174m OW

201m OW

go big or go to Pandora and die

Something around 150m

Reviews start at 83% 7.1/10 avg rating.

Looks like it will settle in low 70s, high 60s. Not great

I feel like this will have a worse story than the original (which was more copying Dances with Wolves/Ferngully than bad in a vacuum)

In Grace Randolph's latest movie math video (around December 11, 2022), she doubted that Avatar 2 will have an opening weekend over $200 million. In the box office theory forum, some posters have a hard time producing tracking results of over $20 million for Thursday previews. Wakanda Forever, the #2 weekend opener of 2022 with $181.3 million had Thursday previews of $28 million.
Jurassic World Dominion had a $18 million Thursday previews and a $145.1 million opening weekend.
So I voted for the #3 highest weekend opener of 2022 for Avator The Way of the Water.

Reviews stayed the same as 50 more came in. Looks like it has a chance to stay over 80% and 7/10 avg rating

Deadline says $38m advance sales. Expect walk up business to be better than MCU films so should be interesting.

$205M opening

Buzz seems positive and I think there will be a lot of walk-ups. This has wide appeal from older sci fi Gen Xer fans, millennials and Gen Z that grew up with the first one, and families because it still comes across like an animated movie. There is also literally nothing else to see.

I'll go with subdued opening but better second weekend drop (like the original). $145M. People aren't going to rush out to any show on this like Spiderman. They'll be much more deliberate and watch it on premium screens. Expect many of those best screens will sell out (or have already) so they'll spread out across next week's dailies and second weekend. I'd rather wait to see it on a good screen than see it for the sake of it OW on a subpar screen. Of all movies, this demands the best screen possible.

Yeea, the cinemas are empty now.

Friday: $73M ($22M Previews)
Saturday: $57M
Sunday: $55M
Weekend: $185M

Only part of this I'm really confident in is that Sunday > raw Friday. I think the runtime plus the lack of "gotta see it ASAP!!!" rush that usually surrounds these mega-openers will push out the business further into the weekend.

My theater was oddly unbusy. I went to an early showing so it wasn't that surprising at first, but I expected it to be packed with eager fans on the way out.

I think the opening will be big but subdued and it will all be about legs. I see it more likely going under $170m than over $190m

Premium showings around me were packed. normal showings were only average

Just read that the average ticket price for a 3D premium general seat is at $18.28 for Avatar 2, versus $12.53 for a 2D seat, and last weekend’s average theater ticket price of $12.04.

By comparison, Avatar 1's time, average ticket prices were $7.61 in Q4 2009, Imax prices were at $14.58, and 3D premium was $2-4 over $2 (approximately $10 average).

I did a quick search on an IMAX theater in SF, ticket price was $25.49. Will be on the higher end being in a major city but didn't want to find an average so using it since coastal cities will be popular for Avatar 2.

So here's the stats since 2009:

Average ticket price growth (2D): +64.7%
3D ticket price growth: +82.8%
Imax ticket price growth: +74.8%

Let's say overall, ticket prices are up 75% vs 2009 for Avatar ($1.3B). Avatar can lose 55% of its audience this time and ticket prices have gone up so significantly it would still top TGM.

What's staggering is 2019 ticket price average was $9.16. We've seen a 31.4% increase in average tickets (not even covering a likely increase driven further by Avatar tickets) in just three years. It took 10 years for tickets to jump 58.2% from Q4 2009 to 2019.