Avatar: Fire and Ash is now up to $760.4 million at the global box office as the Disney sci-fi sequel heads towards one billion dollars from theaters.
$217.7 million has now been made domestically, but Avatar: Fire and Ash is doing particularly well internationally, where it has an impressive $542.7 million haul after an impressive 25% overall drop. Avatar 1 and 2 were the world’s number one film for a number of weeks following launch, and each ended up earning over $2 billion. The hope for Disney is that Avatar 3 shows similar staying power in theaters, and it’s drip-feeding Avengers: Doomsday teaser trailers alongside the movie to encourage repeat viewings from super fans. James Cameron’s three Avatar films have now earned over $6 billion to date globally, including Fire and Ash.
The lingering question for Cameron is whether Avatar 3 does enough business to convince Disney to greenlight Avatar 4 and 5. Avatar: Fire and Ash launched to a huge $345 million at the global box office, which was enough to secure the second largest opening weekend of 2025 so far. But it was down significantly on its predecessor Avatar: The Way of Water’s opening weekend haul.
The special effects-heavy Avatar films cost a huge amount of money to produce, but they have historically made billions of dollars at the box office. Avatar remains the highest-grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation), and has earned a staggering $2.9 billion across several theatrical runs. Avatar: The Way of Water earned $2.3 billion, meanwhile, cementing it as the third-highest grossing film of all time — just ahead of Cameron’s own Titanic.
Avatar 4 currently has a December 21, 2029 release date, with Avatar 5 due out December 19, 2031. Cameron, now 71, would be close to 80 years old by the time it all wraps up.
But Cameron has sounded words of caution recently. Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Cameron admitted he was feeling nervous about Avatar: Fire and Ash’s box office performance, and was mindful of the “forces” working against theatrical releases in 2025. There’s the potential for “sequelitis,” Cameron noted. “People tend to dismiss sequels unless it’s the third Lord of the Rings film and you want to see what happens to everybody, which in my mind this is — this is the culmination of a story arc, but that may not be how the public sees it.” And there’s the “one-two punch” of streaming and Covid, which means fewer people are going to the movies — 75% of the number in 2019, Cameron suggested.
