The ‘Avatar 2’ Box Office Numbers Seemingly Have No End, Much Like 'The Way of Water'

Like Reya says in Avatar: The Way of Water, “The way of water has no beginning and no end.” So too is the box office power of the James Cameron-helmed film, which debuted in theaters more than a decade after its predecessor.

Indeed, Avatar 2 has achieved stunning box office numbers that catapults the 3-hours-and-12-minutes-long flick to the top of the charts in terms of the highest-grossing movies of all time. So exactly how much money has the long-anticipated film grossed? Let’s take a look at what is known so far about the powerhouse that is the second installment of this beloved franchise.

The top box office blowout of all time is the first Avatar movie, which came out in 2009 (can you believe it?) and grossed $2.8 billion when all was said and done, per USA Today. Fun fact: the two movies were released around the same time of year, so it’s already looking like the sequel, which secured the top spot at the box office for the fifth weekend in a row as of January 14, 2023 per Variety, is set to outpace the OG Avatar over the three-day long Martin Luther King weekend of 2023.

Consider that the first movie made about half a billion bucks in 2010 and The Way of Water has already earned over $538 million at time of writing — which is Sunday morning! It’ll be very interesting to see how the flick does on Sunday and Monday, with Box Office Mojo reporting that worldwide, Avatar 2 has made a stunning $1,762,401,348. We can also report that the Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña vehicle became the highest-grossing film of 2022, per CNBC.

How the movie will ultimately compare to Avatar, well, we’ll have to wait and see. But experts are predicting it’ll stand up to other top-grossing flicks outside of the franchise, including Avengers: Endgame, which made $2.7 billion in 2019, and of course, the unparalleled achievement of another of James’ iconic films, Titanic, which pulled down a jaw-dropping $2.19 billion all the way back in 1997.

Despite the very long runtime of The Way of Water, moviegoers are taking to Twitter to gush over the box office winner, which easily beat out competitors such as A Man Called Otto and Plane.

Given the overwhelming success of the movie, James is already gearing up to gift fans with many more Avatar movies. As the prolific director said on Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? per The Hollywood Reporter, “It looks like just with the momentum that the film has now that we’ll easily pass our break-even in the next few days, so it looks like I can’t wiggle out of this — I’m gonna have to do these other sequels.” Indeed, James joked, “I know what I’m going to be doing the next six or seven years.”

The name of the third installment of the franchise, which is "in the can" per James, is rumored to be Avatar: The Seed Bearer, and it’s set to debut in December of 2024. “And then Avatar 4 and 5 are both written,” James confirmed. Fans can expect Avatar: The Tulkun Rider (the rumored title) to come out in 2026, and Avatar: The Quest for Eywa (again, the reported title), to follow in 2028, per Polygon.