Box Office Update: Avatar 2 goes up 7% in its third weekend

Numbers are beginning to roll in for this final weekend of 2022 and as expected Avatar: The Way of Water is taking first place. What’s impressive is that the epic sequel is actually gaining momentum and crushing predictions (including my own) in its third week of release adding 7% to its domestic total with around $67.8 million. The film continues its strong international run as well as having amassed nearly $1.2 billion already. Can it reach the magical $2 billion mark? It is certainly possible!

Coming in second place is the animated sequel Puss in Boots: The Last Wish with an estimated $13.3 million which would actually be 7% above what it made last weekend and a running total of $62.1 million after 13 days of release. With good word of mouth and solid reviews (including an 8/10 from our own JimmyO) the film should continue to play well over the next few weeks/ months.

Shooting back up the charts to third place looks to be Black Panther: Wakanda Forever with an estimated 3-day take of $4.7 million and a running total of nearly $440 million after 8 weeks of release. That puts it in second place of the most recent Marvel releases as Spider-Man: No Way Home finished its domestic run with just over $814 million while Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness finished with $411.3 million domestic and Thor: Love & Thunder finished with $343.2 million domestic.

Fourth and fifth place look to be your box office bombs I Wanna Dance With Somebody and Babylon with an estimated $3.7 million and $2.9 million respectively. The good news for these movies is those numbers represent small week to week declines of just 22% and 19% respectively, but when your movie opens so low to begin with, there really wasn’t much room to drop. I guess if you want to look at the bright side, for Babylon, it should surpass the lifetime gross of last years Nightmare Alley that finished its run with $11.3 million.

According to Comscore analytics, this year is looking to finish with $7.39 billion which is up from 2020’s $2.27 and 2021’s $4.49 billion but we still aren’t hitting pre-pandemic numbers like 2018’s $11.81 billion and 2019’s $11.3 billion. But I guess the steady increase is encouraging and maybe 2023 will get us back to those numbers.

Did you make it out to theaters this weekend If so let us know what you saw in the comments section and don’t forget to check back tomorrow for a full run down of this weekends box office numbers.