Pre-Christmas Box Office: ‘Avatar 2’ Crossing $200M U.S. Today, ‘Puss In Boots 2’ At $6M+, ‘I Wanna Dance’ Starts Previews As Winter Weather Impacts Ticket Sales

Broadway box office took the expected drop last week, declining nearly 30% (to $37,394,931) from the previous week’s holiday-pumped $52M figure. Attendance for the 32 shows was down about 12% (to 275,834), but remained at a solid 92% of total capacity.

EXCLUSIVE: James Wan has been labeled by fans for being responsible for killer doll movies, specifically his Conjuring franchise spinoff, Annabelle.

Refresh for latest…: That was fast. Coming out of its fourth weekend of release, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water has topped $1.7B globally and become the No. 7 biggest movie of all time worldwide.

SUNDAY AM, NEW YEAR’S DAY: Refresh for more analysis and chart While New Year’s Eve is typically a better moviegoing day than Christmas Eve, business was still down yesterday at -27% from Friday for all movies. That’s a similar decline to last weekend’s Friday-to-Christmas Eve (-26%), however New Year’s Eve made more than Christmas Eve, $27.9M to $22.2M. Moviegoing is expected to be +19% on New Year’s Day, and there will be an extra cushion in Monday, Jan. 2 as many typically have off in honor of the Sunday holiday. Per our sources, weather wasn’t an issue this weekend.

A family from Dumfries welcomed what could be Scotland's first baby born on Christmas Day.

Coming out of its second weekend, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water has banked an estimated $855.4M globally through Sunday. The sophomore session added $168.6M at the international box office in 52 markets for a $601.7M running cume.

While theaters are still recovering from the pandemic directly impacting attendance and box office outcomes, there are still really great movies struggling to find audiences outside of streaming and VOD options when they are released in theaters. Some smaller to mid-range pictures, mainly horror, have done better than expected in the shadow of the $100-200 million-dollar budgeted blockbusters that seemingly come out round-year now.

. “It’s kind of odd, right? It’s like the universe knitting together.” Whitney Houston was built into Ackie’s DNA growing up in Walthamstow, London. She listened to all of her music and watched every one of her films.

Indonesian movies had racked up close to 55 million admissions in their home market as of December 18, according to local box office analyst Bicara Box Office, overtaking the previous record of 51.9 million admissions set in the pre-pandemic year of 2019. 

With strong and consistent mid-weeks, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water has crested the $600M mark worldwide. This comes after it rapidly passed $500M global earlier this week, following its $441.6M opening weekend. The current worldwide total through Wednesday is $609.7M including $426.8M from the international box office.

20th Century Studios/Disney’s Avatar: The Way of Water made $14.3M yesterday at 4,202 theaters, ranking it as the second best Wednesday of 2022 after Top Gun: Maverick‘s $14.8M on June 1. Avatar 2‘s first Wednesday also outstripped that of Minions: Rise of Gru ($13.5M, July 6) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s first and second Wednesdays($8.1M Nov 16 and $10M on Nov. 23).

The Alamo Drafthouse movie chain looks set to hit $350,000 in ticket sales this November and December from Jon Favreau’s Will Ferrell-starring holiday favorite Elf. The 2003 comedy, about a human baby raised in Santa’s North Pole workshop who returns to New York and saves Christmas, is the chain’s top all-time repertory title, with cumulative grosses passing $1.5 million as fans flock to its movie watch-parties with costumed hosts, props, present wrapping and spaghetti-with-maple-syrup eating contests — Buddy the Elf’s favorite food. The chain ordered 30,000 elf hats this year.

Taking the stage in theaters at the tail end of 2022, the Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” is a crowd-pleasing homage to the life, legacy, and work of an icon who sold over 200 million records worldwide. One of the year’s last films is also one of the best as a shared theatrical experience.

Christmas weekend is definitely Avatar: The Way of Water‘s to win at the box office, however, how big or small that is remains the question especially this early in the week. At the bare minimum, the 20th Century Studios/Disney movie should secure $60M-$65M for the 3-day and $90M-$95M for the 4-day. That’s on par with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story which played into its second weekend in a year when Christmas fell on a Sunday. Avatar 2 made $16M yesterday, with a Sunday to Monday decline at -56% which was similar to Rogue One‘s -54%. Rogue One‘s first Monday was $17.5M. Some rivals won’t be surprised if Avatar 2 touches $100M over its four-day run. Through four days, Avatar 2 counts just over $150M.