Avatar 2 Just Knocked Out One Of The Biggest Movies In History
Avatar 2 has now officially outgrossed Jurassic World.
Avatar 2 is climbing the ranks of the highest-grossing films in history. The film, which premiered only four weeks ago, has overtaken Colin Trevorrow’s 2015 film, Jurassic World, to the tune of $1.7 billion worldwide. The long-awaited sequel to James Cameron’s Avatar, which premiered in 2009 and currently holds the number one position for highest-grossing film of all time, is expected to continue climbing the charts and surpass Spider-Man: No Way Home soon, according to a writeup from Variety. Currently, the only films grossing higher than Avatar: The Way Of Water are Avatar, Avengers: Endgame, Titanic, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Avengers: Infinity War, and Spider-Man: No Way Home.
This creates an interesting benchmark for James Cameron, who directed both Avatar and Avatar 2, as well as 1997’s Titanic, holding three of the top seven films in the list. With Avatar: The Way Of Water expected to continue climbing, it appears as though Cameron has a real shot at occupying the top three positions all by himself. For a weathered explorer such as Cameron, who braved the depths of the Mariana Trench in a deep sea exploring craft, these uncharted heights should come as a welcome adventure.
Disney produced the second installment in the Avatar film series, as well as J.J. Abrams’s The Force Awakens, and each of the three Marvel films rounding out the top seven. Titanic was produced by Paramount Pictures 20th Century Fox, which completed a merger with Disney back in 2019, acquiring distribution rights to international markets, leaving 2009’s Avatar as the sole film on the list not owned or distributed by Disney. Perhaps this stranglehold on the box office is what allows Disney to spend unheard-of amounts of money on production costs for films like Avatar 2, in turn forcing the film to gross over $1 billion just to break even, according to comments Cameron made before the film’s release.
This is also terrific news for fans of the franchise, as James Cameron had threatened to pull future sequels from production if Avatar 2 didn’t gross enough money, seeing a failure to make a return on investment as a sign that audiences simply weren’t interested in the story of Pandora’s inhabitants. Projected box office numbers also painted a negative picture of the films’ expected earnings before release, threatening Cameron’s vision for another huge box office smash. Of course, the film is currently on track to gross over $2 billion, securing its place in the pop culture zeitgeist, and securing a future for the planned sequels, so it appears as though the projected numbers cannot always be trusted.
With Avatar 3 and 4 moving forward, James Cameron is focused on the future of Pandora. Plus, with the latest advances in CGI technology and the financial backing of Disney, it seems that the follow-up films won’t take 13 years to produce like Avatar 2 did. This years-long gap between the first film and the second is likely the number one cause for the disparity between fan interest and projected earnings, as it became difficult to predict how well the film would fare after the IP was out of the public mind’s immediate purview for more than a decade.
