'Avatar 2' soars past 'Top Gun' with $1.5 billion to become highest-grossing film of 2022, and it's already the 10th biggest movie ever

Tom Cruise's "Top Gun: Maverick" easy took connected "Jurassic World", "Minions" and a trio of films from Marvel. But successful the extremity it was nary lucifer for James Cameron. 

"Avatar: The Way of Water" has surpassed "Maverick's" container bureau haul successful conscionable its archetypal 3 weeks successful theaters, raking successful an astonishing $1.51 cardinal worldwide since Dec. 16 according to Box Office Mojo data. 

The fig makes it the highest-grossing merchandise of 2022, and has allowed it to leapfrog 2015's "Furious 7" to go the No. 10 highest-grossing movie of each time. 

Box bureau watchers don't expect "Avatar 2" to dilatory down immoderate clip soon. The movie has a wide runway to proceed raking successful summons income and is expected to person a steadfast grip connected IMAX, Dolby and different premium show formats until the merchandise of "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" adjacent month. 

It's invited quality for Cameron, who successful the tally up to the film's merchandise claimed that it would request to gain astatine slightest $2 billion conscionable to interruption even. Along with the archetypal "Avatar" ($2.92 billion) and "Titanic" ($2.2 billion), Cameron has present directed 3 of the 10 biggest blockbusters ever.

"I truly wonderment what benignant of legs it volition make present that we're retired of the holidays," Shawn Robbins, main expert astatine BoxOffice.com tells CNBC Make It. "The archetypal movie famously conscionable kept going and going and going."

"[James Cameron] built a vocation connected movies that person a dilatory pain astatine the container office, and it truly is connected show again with the sequel," helium adds. 

"Avatar's" container bureau dominance wasn't a fixed from the outset. The film's opening play fell abbreviated of container bureau expectations, and the wintertime storms that deed ample swaths of the state besides depressed assemblage numbers.  

The planetary appetite for "Avatar 2" has helped transportation the film. While "Top Gun" earned $718 cardinal successful the States and $770 cardinal abroad, $1.05 cardinal of "Avatar's" summons income person travel from overseas, with American audiences contributing a comparatively humble $464 cardinal arsenic of Jan. 6. 

"Avatar" besides isn't behaving similar a emblematic sequel. Most sequels successful large franchises usually spot frontloaded container bureau returns arsenic fans unreserved to theaters opening play and past rapidly driblet disconnected week-after-week, but "Avatar" hasn't seen immoderate steep drops implicit its archetypal 3 weeks.

 "It's behaving similar thing that radical didn't spell spot backmost successful the day," Robbins says. "There's been a instrumentality to 'Avatar' successful the mode that makes it somewhat of an archetypal movie for a batch of people. They're rediscovering the franchise done this sequel."

Whether oregon not it volition beryllium capable to lucifer its predecessor and go the highest-grossing movie ever made remains to beryllium seen, but "Avatar: The Way of Water's" show truthful acold is making Cameron's $2 cardinal forecast look good.

""When that archetypal play possibly didn't rather deed immoderate of the high-end expectations it called into question whether it could get there," Robbins says. "Now present we are and it's implicit $1.5 cardinal and has a beauteous steadfast runway to marque up a batch more. So the likelihood are amended than ever."

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