Movie Monday: ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Makes a Monkey Out of ‘Primate’

It feels like we’re repeating ourselves lately. But don’t blame us. Blame Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For the last four weeks, Fire and Ash director James Cameron has been metaphorically painting himself blue and dancing atop his competitors’ box-office graves, tossing money into the air all the while. This past weekend, Fire and Ash collected another $21.3 million worth of confetti stateside, bringing the third Avatar movie’s total domestic tally to $342.6 million.

That’s Pandorian chicken feed compared to what the film’s doing overseas. Fire and Ash has banked $888 million internationally, boosting its global coffers more than $1.2 billion. Turns out, the movie’s exploitive evildoers didn’t need to slaughter a bunch of sentient whales to make a lot of cash: All they needed to do was wait for Avatar’s box-office receipts to roll in and make its own killing.

While Fire and Ash was once again the weekend’s runaway winner, the box office did at least bring some new blood to the contest.

The horror movie Primate proved to be the weekend’s biggest also-ran. The film, predicated on a rabid chimpanzee, bit into an estimated $11.3 million in North America—enough to land in second place. The international marketplace was fairly inoculated to the film’s questionable charms: It earned just $2.1 million overseas for a total gross of $13.4 million.

The Housemaid continued to sweep up its own dustbin of cash, earning another $11.2 million and falling just a simian hair short of second place itself. The thriller has now earned $94.2 million stateside and $142.7 million worldwide.

After seven weeks in theaters, Zootopia 2 is getting a little long in the tooth. But it earned another $10.1 million domestically to lock down another top-five finish, landing in fourth place. The Disney film has now earned $378.8 million in North America and nearly $1.7 billion worldwide.

Newcomer Greenland 2: Migration closed out the top five with $8.5 million.

One other rookie to make note of: I Was a Stranger, Angel’s latest flick, earned $1.2 million in North America to finish 13^th.