Box office news: ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ roars to $345 million opening weekend worldwide
James Cameron’s third entry to the epic Avatar franchise, Fire and Ash, has opened in cinemas, and the early box office signs look promising.
Across a four-day opening, Avatar: Fire and Ash grossed $345 million worldwide.
Film News Blitz’s Dan Lawrence crunches the numbers.
How impressive is the box office opening for ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’?
$345 million worldwide grants Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third-biggest opening of 2025, behind Zootopia 2 ($560.3 million) and China’s animated epic Ne Zha 2 ($431.2 million).
James Cameron owns the number one, three and fourth-place spots in the all-time global box office haul table, with Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water and Titanic each grossing over $2 billion.
Fire and Ash has a lot to live up to then, and its opening is the second-best of a Cameron film, behind the previous Avatar entry, Way of Water, which opened to $441.7 million worldwide.
It also sits second behind Way of Water for a Cameron opening in North America, but can Fire and Ash reach the $2 billion-plus mark that each of the other Avatar films have managed?
Special format presentations, 3D and IMAX, the latter of which had its biggest opening of 2025 with Fire and Ash, will hopefully spur this third Avatar film along, as will its long theatrical release window.
Working against this film, however, is the fact that it comes just three years on from Way of Water, which capitalised on a 13-year hiatus in the Avatar franchise.
What has the critical reception of ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ been like?
Word of mouth will also have a significant impact on the success Avatar: Fire and Ash will have in the long run at the box office.
Audiences appear to be receiving the Cameron behemoth well, with Fire and Ash earning an A CinemaScore.
Critics, however, have been mixed in their appraisals of the film, earning it a 66% score on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest of the three Avatar films.
The critical aggregator surmised the consensus of the film thusly: “remaining on the cutting edge of visual effects, Fire and Ash repeats the narrative beats of its predecessors to frustrating effect, but its grand spectacle continues to stoke one-of-a-kind thrills.”
But film reviews are purely subjective, and Cameron’s main focus is the average cinema punter, and box office numbers will be the key metric by which Avatar: Fire and Ash is measured.
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