It was cold at the box office.
Sure, it was cold almost everywhere in the United States this weekend, with much of the nation locked into one of the chilliest Christmases on record. That was bad news for the movie industry, which normally counts on Christmas as being one of its busiest times of the year. And not even a trio of holiday newcomers could lure folks out of their homes.
Those who did brave the cold for the comfort of the multiplex? Well, most went to see Avatar: The Way of Water.
For the second straight weekend, The Way of Water dominated the box office, clearing an estimated $64 million in North America Friday-through-Christmas Day. That brings its total domestic gross to a cool $261.7 million and makes it the year’s eighth highest-grossing film. Worldwide, The Way of Water has banked a stone-cold $889.4 million thus far.
But as mentioned last week, The Way of Water still has a way to go if it hopes to make a profit.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, fell short with its own box-office wishes. It finished second behind the Avatar sequel, but it earned just $12.4 million over the traditional three-day weekend, bringing its total haul to a rather disappointing $18.5 million. But who knows? It could draw a bigger audience as the weather warms up. Maybe this cat’s ninth life still has some life in it yet.
Another newcomer, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, warbled its way into third place with $4.8 million. Meanwhile, the star-studded, incredibly salacious Oscar hopeful Babylon landed with a thud in fourth place with $3.6 million. Box Office Mojo suggests that it just might be “one of the year’s biggest flops.” Wonder if Babylon’s makers saw the writing on the wall?
Violent Night and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever were both jousting for fifth place honors according to estimates, with Violent Night about $30,000 ahead based on the studio’s projections.
3 Responses
-Avatar the way of water is best picture of the year as far as I’m concerned. The Batman is number two.
-Part of that may have been from people who wanted to go ahead and see Avatar on their Monday off like I did, for two reasons—one, the movie is so long (and it did not need to be three hours) that I figured I’d better get it over with, and two, I wanted to go ahead and see it in IMAX (very pretty, but in my opinion a much more scant use of 3D than the first film did so well with) while I’d still have the chance to do so. The Puss In Boots follow-up has been reviewing extremely well, though, both with critics and with audience members, and Avatar’s target audience skews higher than trying to get children safely to the theatre in the midst of what was, for a lot of America, a severe winter storm with very dangerous road conditions.
-One thing I’ll definitely say about Avatar 2, over and above my thoughts on the actual story, is that the scenes of children being tortured or taken hostage (both resulting in visible bleeding), and of the whaling incident Plugged In’s review zeroed in on, were just extremely uncomfortable to witness, especially with how both incidents made the movie’s antagonists seem both ideologically cruel and pragmatically senseless instead of being at all easy to empathize with (even as they were trying to get resources for Earth in both movies).