‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ burns up the Christmas box office

Hello! Welcome to The Box Office Report for the weekend of Dec. 26-28, 2026.

Production note

My holiday travel plans changed, so it turns out we’re doing The Box Office Report this weekend. Surprise!

1. Avatar: Fire and Ash

Weekend gross: $64M
Total domestic gross: $217.7M
Last weekend: 1st
Percent drop: 28

Let’s cut to the chase when it comes to Avatar: Fire and Ash — the third installment in James Cameron’s saga is a box office hit. It’s been at No. 1 both weekends of its release, is on track to hit the $1 billion worldwide mark at some point in the next week and shows no sign of suffering a drop in folks willing to keep paying to see the movie each weekend.

But ... Fire and Ash’s trajectory makes me question if it can keep up with the pace of the original Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water.

Thanks to a second weekend of $75.6 million, Avatar jumped out to a $212.7 million haul through this point, which is just a few million bucks behind Fire and Ash’s $217.7 million domestic total. Fire and Ash, though, got to this point with a second weekend total of $64 million — a number that the first Avatar also beat in its third weekend in theaters.

And even if Fire and Ash were blowing away Avatar’s weekend-to-weekend companions, the original film’s pace is incredibly hard to stick with. The Way of Water had a huge advantage over its predecessor, opening with $134.1 million compared to Avatar’s $77 million, but eventually fell behind Avatar’s pace.

I’m sure Cameron will be fine if Fire and Ash can’t live up to Avatar’s lofty box office heights. The latest Avatar film will likely give him four films in a row that hit $1 billion worldwide: Titanic with $2.223 billion, Avatar with $2.924 billion and Avatar: The Way of Water with $2.323 billion. Can Fire and Ash make it four films in a row to hit $2 billion?

Will we allow Joe and Anthony Russo into the former club if and when Avengers: Doomsday crosses $1 billion? Sure, they had Captain America: Civil War ($1.152 billion), Avengers: Infinity War ($2.048 billion) and Avengers: Endgame ($2.718 billion), but then they went and made a bunch of streaming movies.

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2. Zootopia 2

Weekend gross: $20M
Total domestic gross: $321.4M
Last weekend: 5th
Percent increase: 35

With Christmas week in action, Zootopia 2 jumped back up from No. 5 last week to No. 2 this week. The animated sequel sits at No. 6 overall for 2025 releases, just over $10 million away from passing Wicked: For Good ($331.6 million).

Zootopia 2 is also less than $20 million away from surpassing the original Zootopia’s entire $341.1 million domestic haul. (The sequel’s $1.421 billion worldwide gross has already blown away its predecessor’s $1.018 billion total.)