James Cameron has one of the best box office track records, but will Avatar: The Way of Water see the same level of success as Titanic and the first Avatar? Avatar: The Way of Water has already earned over $1 billion at the global box office, but what will it take for it to become one of the highest-grossing movies of all time?
The box office potential of blockbuster movies isn’t always easy to forecast. Some movies follow similar enough box office patterns that their performance can be predicted after their opening weekend, but that’s not the case with James Cameron. Cameron’s movies don’t only out-earn other movies at the box office, but follow totally different box office behavior to get there. So, how do James Cameron movies normally behave, and what can this tell us about Avatar: The Way of Water‘s box office potential?
James Cameron Movies Have Low Opening Weekend Box Office And Really Strong Legs
James Cameron’s filmography has seen unrivaled box office success, and while the box office performance of Cameron’s movies can’t be compared apples-to-apples for a variety of reasons such as differences in budget or the era they were released in, there are a few common factors to his box office success. Titanic and Avatar get the most attention because they both became the highest-grossing movie of all time after their release, but even his lower-grossing movies had similar box office behavior, just to a smaller extent.
Cameron’s movies usually see big opening weekend numbers, but strong word-of-mouth traditionally leads to strong legs and his movies earn most of their box office in the weeks after release. Cameron’s average box office “multiplier” (used to calculate the change between a movie’s opening weekend box office and total domestic draw), the top 10 highest-grossing movies of all time have an average multiplier of 5.65, but if you exclude Avatar (10.19) and Titanic (23.02), the average is just 2.91. The average multiplier for the top 10 movies in 2022 is 2.92. Meanwhile, Cameron’s average multiplier is 9.89.
The biggest multiplier in the all-time top 10 excluding Avatar and Titanic is Star Wars: The Force Awakens’s 3.78 (and a total domestic haul of $936.7 million) and the best of 2022’s top 10 is Top Gun: Maverick‘s 5.67 (and a $718,732,821 domestic total). For contrast, Cameron’s lowest multiplier is True Lies’ 5.65. Even excluding Avatar and Titanic‘s, Cameron’s average is still an impressive 7.2. If Avatar had a 7.2 multiplier (instead of 10.19), it would have earned $554.5 million domestically – enough to rank 13th all-time. So, while the massive multipliers of Avatar and Titanic’s box office are huge outliers, even for Cameron, his other movies still performed exceptionally well.
James Cameron’s Movies Make a Lot of Box Office Money Internationally (Especially in China)
Cameron’s multipliers prove his movies have strong box office performance domestically, but the true secret to Cameron’s box office performance comes from the international box office. Since he’s been directing movies since the 1980s, before the international box office had grown to have the impact it has today, this is more true of his more recent movies, but going back to the 1990s, Cameron’s international appeal was already apparent.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) earned 59 percent of its box office internationally and True Lies (1994) earned 61 percent of its box office internationally, but things really picked up with Titanic (1997), which earned 70 percent of its box office internationally, and Avatar (2009) with 73 percent. Comparatively, the top 10 movies of all time average 64 percent and the top 10 movies of 2022 average 57 percent. Cameron has also seen some huge success in China specifically, with Avatar earning $202.6 of its initial run in China and $57.7 million from Avatar‘s 2021 re-release. Titanic also earned a whopping $145 million from its 2012 3D re-release in China (15 years after its original run).
How Avatar: The Way of Water Compares to James Cameron’s Other Movies
Avatar: The Way of Water‘s opening weekend box office was the biggest of any James Cameron movie, although, consistent with the rest of his filmography, its opening weekend numbers aren’t particularly impressive compared to other top earners. Coming in at $134.1 million, Avatar: The Way of Water has the fifth-biggest opening weekend box office for 2022, but if the movie makes it into the top 10 of all time, $134.1 would be the third-smallest opening weekend on the list, ahead of only Avatar and Titanic.
So far, Avatar: The Way of Water has seen moderate legs, but its second-weekend box office dropped by 52.8 percent, which is Cameron’s biggest drop by a significant margin. Before Avatar 2, Cameron’s biggest drop was 34.7 percent for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and his average was 9.2 percent. For contrast, the first Avatar‘s box office dropped just 1.8 percent in its second weekend and Titanic actually went up by over 23 percent. Compared to the top 10 highest-grossing movies of 2022, Avatar: The Way of Water‘s second-weekend drop is third best, coming in behind Top Gun: Maverick‘s 28.9 percent and The Batman‘s 50.4 percent.
When it comes to Avatar: The Way of Water‘s international numbers, it tracks just below Cameron’s averages, having earned 69.3 percent of its total box office internationally so far, thanks to a Chinese release, which many of 2022’s top 10 didn’t get. The movie hasn’t even been out two weeks yet, so those percentages could shift significantly, but for now it’s on par with Cameron’s typical box office performance.
Predicting Avatar: The Way of Water’s Box Office Potential
A number of factors make Avatar: The Way of Water‘s box office difficult to predict. It’s not clear if it’ll perform more like a typical blockbuster or like Cameron’s other movies. Additionally, a big winter storm impacted its second-weekend earnings, and this year Christmas fell on a Sunday, as opposed to Friday for the first Avatar (or Thursday for Titanic), meaning the 52.8 percent second-weekend drop may not be a fair point of comparison, especially since Avatar: The Way of Water saw a 10.6 percent increase on its second Monday (over Sunday the 25th, Christmas Day) while Titanic and Avatar both saw a drop-off on their second Monday.
Despite the lack of apples-to-apples comparison, we can still make rough predictions for Avatar: The Way of Water’s box office based on a variety of scenarios. First, if we assume Avatar: The Way if Water‘s performance will be consistent with Cameron’s averages, meaning a 9.89 multiplier for its domestic earnings, and that it’ll earn 70 percent of its box office internationally, then Avatar: The Way of Water will earn $1.3 billion domestically, $3.2 billion for a grand total of $4.5 billion. These record shattering numbers are surely a pipe dream, but it’s simply the product of Avatar: The Way of Water achieving Cameron’s average, which is a lower multiplier than both Avatar and Titanic.
A far more modest calculation for Cameron’s average multiplier would be to exclude Avatar, Titanic, and Terminator as high/low outliers, resulting in a 6.61 average multiplier. Assuming a slightly lower 65 percent of earnings coming internationally, these conditions would result in Avatar: The Way of Water earning $886.8 million domestically (ranking second all-time domestically), $1.7 billion internationally, and $2.6 billion globally, which would pass Titanic as the third highest-grossing movie of all time behind Avengers: Endgame, and the original Avatar. Of course, it’s possible it doesn’t behave at all like Cameron’s previous movies and will have a multiplier more consistent with other blockbusters, meaning a far lower box office haul.
If Avatar: The Way of Water performs like the average top 10 highest grossing movies of all time, it’ll have a 5.65 multiplier and earn 65 percent of its money internationally, its domestic run will top out around $758.2 million domestically (fifth-highest of all time), and 65 percent of its box office coming internationally would be 1.4 billion, coming to 2.1 billion globally, the fourth-highest grossing movie of all time. If it performs like the top 10 movies of 2022 (a list it’s already on), it’ll have a 2.92 multiplier and earn 57 percent of its box office internationally, meaning $391.6 million domestically, $522 million internationally, and $913.7 million globally, the fifth highest-grossing movie of 2022, but not even making the top 10 all-time list.
Since Cameron’s other movies, particularly Avatar and Titanic, behave so differently from other blockbusters, it’s difficult to forecast Avatar: The Way of Water‘s box office potential. On one hand, it’s not fair to assume it’ll behave like a typical non-Cameron blockbuster, but it seems wildly ambitious to assume it’ll perform like an average James Cameron movie, especially when hitting Cameron’s averages would give it a hyperbolic $4.5 billion box office gross. Avatar: The Way of Water has already crossed $1 billion and there’s multiple clear paths to landing among the top five all-time box office earners, but only time will reveal its true box office potential.