Movie Monday: ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Burns Down Competition

One thing Colonel Miles Quaritch and James Cameron have in common? They both know that they can get rich off of Pandora.

Avatar: Fire and Ash (the third in the Avatar franchise) burned down the rest of its competition this week by generating $88 million in North America off the alien planet’s resources. That domestic opening is better than the first Avatar ($77 million) but worse than The Way of Water ($134.1 million). Internationally, Fire and Ash fared far better (as Avatar movies tend to do): it took in $257 million, bringing its worldwide cume to $345 million.

It turns out that Cameron was the only giant that David couldn’t beat. Still, the movie put on a great showing for an Angel release, generating $22 million in its opening weekend. That places the movie as the company’s third highest-grossing movie of all time, behind Sound of Freedom ($184.1 million) and The King of Kings ($60.3 million). But given that those later two numbers depict total gross, we wouldn’t be surprised to see David earn more than The King of Kings when all is said and done.

Sydney Sweeney’s The Housemaid took the bronze medal; in the US, it earned $19 million (worldwide numbers are not yet reported). Meanwhile, The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants sunk to fourth, soaking up $16 million from domestic waters. Like The Housemaid, its international earnings are still buried treasure to us.

With four new movies making such a box-office splash, we finally find Zootopia 2, kicked all the way from first place to fifth. The animated movie made another $14.5 million this weekend, bringing its domestic gains to $282.8 million. Worldwide, the Disney production has earned $1.3 billion.

While the rest of our box office newcomers had a great week, we should note one that failed to make the top five: Marty Supreme. The movie’s spot in eighth makes its performance look worse than it actually was, however: Despite only earning $875,000, Marty Supreme earned that take from a mere six theaters—or nearly $146,000 per theater. That earns the film the honor of having the biggest per-theater average of 2025—so as more theaters premiere the movie, it’s more than likely we’ll find the Timothée Chalamet flick higher up in the box office next weekend.