Maverick filmmaker James Cameron’s massively mounted directorial venture ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ is running in theatres and the film is being received quite well both critically and commercially. It has already grossed around a whopping $1.4 billion globally until now.
Ever since the film’s release on 16th December, all eyes were on Avatar 2’s box-office figures and whether it will be able to break even and to become profitable during its theatrical run.
Some time back, James Cameron had mentioned in an interview that ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ would have to become the third or fourth highest grossing film of all time in order to be profitable. This implied that the sequel would have to cross the formidable $2 billion box office mark globally to earn profits.
But now, James Cameron has revised his earlier breakeven estimate for ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’. He has recently stated that his film has to be around the tenth highest grossing movie of all time to breakeven. This means that ‘Avatar 2’ has to gross around $1.5 billion at the box office worldwide to be able to do that, and not the previously estimated $2 billion breakeven figure.
And since ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ has already made around $1.4 billion until now, it has to make another $100 million to breach the breakeven point. So, ‘Avatar 2’ is most probably going to break-even later this week, which might be sometime around Wednesday or Thursday.
The latest estimate about the breakeven of ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ is also more in tune with the industry’s thumb rule of a film’s break even being around two to three times of its production budget.
In 2022, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ ranked amongst the top grossing films of the year, only trailing behind Tom Cruise’s aerial actioner ‘Top Gun: Maverick’. After ‘Avatar-2’ achieves its breakeven later this week, it would be very interesting to see whether it can surpass the box-office biggies like ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ ($1.9 billion gross), ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ ($2.05 billion gross), ‘Avengers: Endgame’ ($2.79 billion gross), and James Cameron’s own films ‘Titanic’ ($2.2 billion gross) and ‘Avatar’ ($2.92 billion).