... Excerpts from ‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’ Seeing $45M Saturday, Putting James Cameron Sequel At $135M Opening – Late PM Update:

SATURDAY PM UPDATE: 20th Century Studios/Disney’s Avatar: The Way of Water minted an estimated $45M Saturday which will put the James Cameron directed sequel at a 3-day opening of $135M per sources. That’s the 6th best domestic debut in December after Spider-Man: No Way Home ($260.1M), Force Awakens ($247.9M), Last Jedi ($220M), Rise of Skywalker ($177.3M) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ($155M).

Despite Avatar: The Way of Water missing its $150M-$175M projections, the town doesn’t seem bothered –nor do they believe that the sky is falling for cinema– particularly for a movie that cost according to sources (not Disney) at about around $460M before P&A.

SATURDAY UPDATE: The box office media will be quick to judge that 20th Century Studio/Disney’s Avatar: The Way of Water is coming in under its projections, with an opening day of $53M, and 3-day of $130M-$150M. Projections were between $150M-$175M. That’s far off from the opening day of last December’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, which is the second- highest grossing opening day ever at $121.9M, as well as that pic’s opening weekend at $260.1M, which is also the second-highest ever .

... Excerpt from ‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’ Rakes In $53 Million Opening Day—Which May Not Be Enough:

Key Facts

The Disney and 20th Century Studios sequel to 2009’s Avatar—the highest-grossing film of all time—opened in more than 4,200 theaters this weekend, collecting $17 million in Thursday previews and another $36 million on Friday, Variety reported—nearly double the $26.7 million the first Avatar made on its opening day.

Deadline projects it to make between $130 million and $150 million domestically this weekend, short of the $150 million to $170 million it had been projected to make.

It falls short of the initial success of four Marvel and DC Comics sequels released earlier this year: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which made $90.7 on its opening day, as well as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ($84.2 million), Thor: Love and Thunder ($69.5 million) and The Batman (56.6 million).

It was also narrowly edged out by Jurassic World Dominion, another sequel in the rebooted Jurassic Park franchise, which made $59.5 million on its opening day.

... Excerpts from Avatar 2’s First Box Office Results Are In And Unexpected:

Avatar 2 looks to be financially underperforming at the box office, despite its huge budget. Much to the chagrin of visionary director James Cameron, who refused to attend the premier himself. The film’s projections suggested the film may underperform against its absurd billion-dollar price tag requirement set by Cameron himself, leaving the future of the franchise in doubt. According to Deadline, the film grossed only $53 million on opening day.

Disney’s previous holiday release, Spider-Man: No Way Home grossed $121.9 million on opening day, for reference, setting records as the second largest box office smash of all time, following only another Disney film, Avengers: Endgame. James Cameron made public comments regarding Avatar 2‘s need to outperform those films in order to make its money back, while also lamenting that the Avatar series would outperform Marvel films if there were an equal number of installments in each property. While the film may continue to gross a significant portion of its budget back overseas, there is no way of knowing what effect this will have on the planned sequels.

... Excerpt from ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Opens With $180 Million at the Global Box Office:

After coming in slightly under expectations at the domestic box office, and with China projected to underperform because of a new COVID wave, Avatar: The Way of Water will likely not surpass Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to deliver the top global opening of the year. With $127 million from international markets and another $53 million domestically, The Way of Water has made $180 million worldwide so far.

Financial negatives aside, I recently read a critics review and it was scathing. I mean brutal. I dunno if that critic was just having a bad day or what, but based on that review I decided I probably won't bother--and I rarely take critics at their word, but this guy ripped Av2 a new watering hole 😬

I'm not sure what math Cameron is fudging, but a budget of $460M "only" needs $920M to break even - if they pumped up the promotion, then, maybe, $1bn. Not $2bn.

BUT, limping to a measly payday of $2 is nothing to be proud of.

In my movie ROI database of over 2800 titles from 1924 to present, the average ROI on first sequels in a franchise is 35% of the 1st installment. Avatar paid $11.74 so Avatar: Way of Water would ideally reach ROI of $4.11 with box office of $1.8Bn, which is closer to that "$2Bn" he was reaching for. Whatever. I don't see that happening. It's currently sitting at $600M, good luck getting to break-even.

James Cameron produced one of the greatest sequels - and one of the greatest movies altogether - in Terminator 2: Judgment Day - A:WoW ain't that.

@DRDMovieMusings said:

In my movie ROI database of over 2800 titles from 1924 to present, the average ROI on first sequels in a franchise is 35% of the 1st installment. Avatar paid $11.74 so Avatar: Way of Water would ideally reach ROI of $4.11 with box office of $1.8Bn, which is closer to that "$2Bn" he was reaching for. Whatever. I don't see that happening. It's currently sitting at $600M, good luck getting to break-even.

James Cameron produced one of the greatest sequels - and one of the greatest movies altogether - in Terminator 2: Judgment Day - A:WoW ain't that.

Definitely sounds like he's trying to repeat the T2 formula but I agree chances are lookin slim. I think the biggest problem is that he waited too long; T2 came 7 years after the original (whicht itself is kinda long in movie terms but still safely within the hype zone) while Av2 comes a whopping 13 years later, twice the Terminator hiatus.

Your database would probably shed scientific light on the sequel-wait phenomenon. Broadly, do you see a specific timeframe where sequels tend to be most successful (in terms of ROI as well as box office numbers)? My gut feeling says the ones that come out within 5 years of each other are the most effective at maintaining momentum. For example the first 6 Star Trek movies were all released within 2-3 years of each other (1979, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1989, 1991) and I think that was really effective at stringing fans along for the full ride.

About sequels, when you only look at the relationship between the longest time interval and its box office success, I would think that "Top Gun: Maverick (2022)", which was released almost 36 years after "Top Gun (1986)" is probably the most successful sequel.

The sequel "Bambi II (2006)" to "Bambi (1942)" with a time gap of almost 64 years still has the longest time interval.

Of course, that's an animated movie. I think that the sequel "Mary Poppins Returns (2018)", 54 years after "Mary Poppins (1964)", with a moderate box office profit, is also top on the list when considering the time interval and its chance of financial success. Although most will see that sequel as a flop. (What I missed was the original actress Julie Andrews, who could not return as the protagonist Mary Poppins.)

Excluding the time interval and only considering the Worldwide gross, "Avengers: Endgame (2019)" is still the most successful sequel with $2,797,800,564.

@wonder2wonder said:

About sequels, when you only look at the relationship between the longest time interval and its box office success, I would think that "Top Gun: Maverick (2022)", which was released almost 36 years after "Top Gun (1986)" is probably the most successful sequel.

The sequel "Bambi II (2006)" to "Bambi (1942)" with a time gap of almost 64 years still has the longest time interval.

Of course, that's an animated movie. I think that the sequel "Mary Poppins Returns (2018)", 54 years after "Mary Poppins (1964)", with a moderate box office profit, is also top on the list when considering the time interval and its chance of financial success. Although most will see that sequel as a flop. (What I missed was the original actress Julie Andrews, who could not return as the protagonist Mary Poppins.)

Excluding the time interval and only considering the Worldwide gross, "Avengers: Endgame (2019)" is still the most successful sequel with $2,797,800,564.

I was thinking of Top Gun Maverick when I posted my question, but I think that movie as well as the others you mentioned are the exceptions rather than the rule. The nostalgia sequels (longer than 20 years) succeed when they’re backed by huge budgets, relevant stars and studios willing to hype them relentlessly. But the majority seem to go the way of Bill & Ted 3, Matrix 4, Zoolander 2, Dumb & Dumber 2, Independence Day 2, Psycho 2, Wall Street 2, that Peewee Herman movie on Netflix… I could go on but you get my point: nostalgia sequels have to fight extra hard. If the prize box office demographic is the 18-24 year old group, any sequel that waits a decade or more has really lost its core moneymaker.

It's hit $881M and counting...(breakeven is ~$920M to pay $2)...

It needs to make more than 920 million you forget the theaters take a hefty percentage of the take at the theaters which in the US is roughly 50% and since this movie relies heavily on doing well abroad it has to even work harder with in countries like China Disney only getting 25% of the take and in most other countries Disney gets somewhere between 30 and 40% in those countries. So for Avatar to break even it has to make more like 1.5 billion to break even and too be considered a financial succes that warrants a sequel would be somewhere between the 1.8 -2 billion range. A movie with a budget like this has to earn more than 300 million to be called a success.

@Nexus71 said:

It needs to make more than 920 million you forget the theaters take a hefty percentage of the take at the theaters which in the US is roughly 50% and since this movie relies heavily on doing well abroad it has to even work harder with in countries like China Disney only getting 25% of the take and in most other countries Disney gets somewhere between 30 and 40% in those countries. So for Avatar to break even it has to make more like 1.5 billion to break even and too be considered a financial succes that warrants a sequel would be somewhere between the 1.8 -2 billion range. A movie with a budget like this has to earn more than 300 million to be called a success.

No, I didn't forget. The Insider's Formula is gross / 2 minus production budget. The divided by 2 part is to factor cuts and takes and marketing which is fuzzy because there are so many variables they don't make public, we can only guess. The production budget was $460M, so I simplify in order to find a relatively consistent comparable number. $920M / 2 - $460M = 0.

If you work for Disney and know all the variables (which theatres, how long, how much marketing was spent, etc.), you can plug in more real numbers. I don't, and won't speculate for each movie when I have no way to tally anything beyond the most basic published numbers.

I've built a movie ROI database with over 2,800 titles from 1924 to present. There was no way I could derive any meaningful comparative profit rates of I attempted to speculate all the unpublished variables. I had to simplify to be able to speak meaningfully to movie profitability. That's the extent of my hobby work.

For more granular details, some else will have to bring their passion to that exercise.

Well if Disney spend 920 million on Avatar (Budget+promotion) and earns 920 million you can broadly calculate how much of that is going to Disney by taking the average of 25-50% which is 37.5% 37.5% x 920 which is 345 million that still leaves 920-345 = 575 million for Disney to break even. But I checked IMDB which states a budget estimated at 350 million add 350 million for promotion which makes for 700 million . IMDB states that so far Avatar made 1,101 million Worldwide of which 317 million is from the US 50% x 317 million is 159 million and the rest of the world 1,101-317 = 784 million of which Disney roughly gets 25+40%/2= 32.5% X 784 = 255 million together with the 159 million from the US is 414 million! So far Disney barely earned back the budget which is only half of what it still needs to make. So as a matter of fact Cameron is actually right saying Avatar needs to make more than 2 billion to earn money in fact it needs to make roughly 2.2 billion to break even.

@Nexus71 said:

It needs to make more than 920 million you forget the theaters take a hefty percentage of the take at the theaters which in the US is roughly 50%

Actually, theatres pay an average of 70% of their ticket revenues to the studio distributor. That's why concessions are so expensive - theatres don't make money on ticket sales, it's the distributor that scoops up most of the ticket money. For a more detailed breakdown, see https://thehustle.co/why-is-movie-theater-popcorn-so-outrageously-expensive/

@Nexus71 said:

Well if Disney spend 920 million on Avatar (Budget+promotion) and earns 920 million you can broadly calculate how much of that is going to Disney by taking the average of 25-50% which is 37.5% 37.5% x 920 which is 345 million that still leaves 920-345 = 575 million for Disney to break even. But I checked IMDB which states a budget estimated at 350 million add 350 million for promotion which makes for 700 million . IMDB states that so far Avatar made 1,101 million Worldwide of which 317 million is from the US 50% x 317 million is 159 million and the rest of the world 1,101-317 = 784 million of which Disney roughly gets 25+40%/2= 32.5% X 784 = 255 million together with the 159 million from the US is 414 million! So far Disney barely earned back the budget which is only half of what it still needs to make. So as a matter of fact Cameron is actually right saying Avatar needs to make more than 2 billion to earn money in fact it needs to make roughly 2.2 billion to break even.

I appreciate your effort here.

I read an article once (wish I could find it now) that stated it's odd that movie insiders talk a lot about how difficult it is to make money in the movie business even though, for decades, they've managed to figure it out sufficiently that they could build an industry that is far from bankrupt!

In other words, IF it is mysterious, it's only so as a convenience to avoid scrutiny.

So, for those so inclined, there is some known math, some rigour, that has supported the development of an industry of writers, producers, directors, actors, make-up artists and special effects creators, set design, food services, hotel and travel, distribution....

At any rate, James Cameron has forgotten more about making movies and how the industry works than I will ever know - I'm quite happy to concede that his estimate is far closer to reality than my hobby hack simplification :-)

That 70% might apply for the US but not for countries outside the US and for China it is common for foreign movies only to get 25% of the take .And in most European countries Disney gets somewhere between 30-40% of the take .And that 70% doesn't include that Disney has to pay for distribution to the cinemas and replacement in case of damaged film etc so after deducting those costs Disney gets somewhere between 55-65% tops and that is only with certain Cinema chains. And still the US alone only accounts for roughly a third of the earnings so far while two thirds of the earnings fall under a percentage that is less favorable for Disney. But even under the most favorable circumstances let's say 70% the average would be 25+70%/ 2 = 47.5 % , 47. 5%x1,101 million is 523 million so Disney is still not making money on Avatar for that it has to roughly make 1.5 billion to break even (is what I previously mentioned)and to be even considered profitable is has to make somewhere between 1.8-2 billion. Another interesting thing is that ticket prices have gone up considerably in the US (and I assume elsewhere) since pre- Covid times with prices going up as much as somewhere between 20-30% in the US alone which makes for far less people who actually went to the cinema to watch the movie.

@Nexus71 said:

Another interesting thing is that ticket prices have gone up considerably in the US (and I assume elsewhere) since pre- Covid times with prices going up as much as somewhere between 20-30% in the US alone which makes for far less people who actually went to the cinema to watch the movie.

I've never been a big fan of counting dollars in isolation, since inflation makes the question murky for all those who are not economists (and I rarely refer to "adjusted for inflation" tallies either, although, I'm going to in this paragraph!). To say that Top Gun: Maverick is Tom Cruise's first movie to top $1Bn isn't as big a deal to me once we consider that there wasn't enough money in the demand pool to generate that kind of money in, say, 1986 or 1992. The first movie in my database to crack $1bn is Titanic, 1997 (back to Cameron, right!) which is more a reflection of the availability of demand into which they could sell enough tickets to hit that number. I say that because the highest grossing movie, adjusted for inflation, is STILL Gone with the Wind, released in 1939. It has "only" generated $402M but, compared to the eight other movies in my dbase released in 1939 that together produced an average of $7M in revenue, GwtW is huge...had the economy in 1939 been what it was in 1997, blasting over $1Bn would have happened way back then, too.

Generally, though, ranking movies by revenue by release year has some value in giving an idea what movies people were talking about a lot (think about the watercooler talk generated by movies such as Fatal Attraction or Basic Instinct!)

One metric I devised for my own comparative purposes was to measure the box office revenue as a percentage of all the revenue for movies in that year that I have in my database. This would give me an idea of the "market share" of any movie vs. its competition that year. I hardly ever mention this stat in comments here on TMDb just because it's accessible from revenue alone to get a sense of which movies touched cultural zeitgeist level (although, by no means linear...Terrifier 2 is being talked about lots, and its profit is incredible, but its revenue itself is relatively paltry, right?

@Nexus71 Hi. I hope you're doing well.

Your posts with estimates are sound. You made a good argument about countries outside the US. In the past - before internet became so ubiquitous - I have been trying to get more reliable numbers from them to combine those with the US to make my own calculations more acurate, but that's been largely unsuccessful. Not surprising, as even in the US you have to rely on what the film industry is prepared to publicly reveal. Now with all the information on internet and more sources it's become even more muddled. So, I'll have to be content with the available estimates.

@DRDMovieMusings You've done excellent work on the numbers and I'm impressed with the enormous movie ROI database you built. Keep it up. Chapeau! 🎩