‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ ignites the weekend — but has the franchise lost its box office spark?

Hello! Welcome to The Box Office Report for the weekend of Dec. 19-21, 2025.

Programming note

The Box Office Report will be off next Monday. It will return on Jan. 5, 2026.

1. Avatar: Fire and Ash

Weekend gross: $88M
Total domestic gross: $88M
Last weekend: New release
Percent drop: NA

Avatar: Fire and Ash led a wave of new releases this weekend, knocking every previous release except Zootopia 2 out of the top five. Director James Cameron’s latest Avatar movie easily took first place, grossing $88 million in North America.

Fire and Ash’s $88 million first weekend beats the original Avatar’s $77 million debut, but lags way behind Avatar: The Way of Water’s $134.1 million opening. The second Avatar had the advantage of fans having to wait thirteen years between movies, with that pent-up anticipation paying off big. For Fire and Ash, it’s only been three years since The Way of Water — has the box office novelty worn off the Avatar franchise?

Don’t get me wrong, most movies would kill to open with $88 million. But that’s only the ninth biggest weekend of 2025, coming in ahead of the live-action How to Train Your Dragon remake ($84.6 million) and a tick behind Captain America: Brave New World ($88.8 million).

The true test for Fire and Ash going forward is whether it can match the subsequent weekend-to-weekend performances of its predecessors. Avatar and The Way of Water hit their respective $785.2 million and $688.8 million domestic grosses thanks to second and third weekends in the $50 million to $60 million range.

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2. David

Weekend gross: $22M
Total domestic gross: $22M
Last weekend: New release
Percent drop: NA

The Angel Studios-distributed animated movie managed to notch a better opening weekend than both The Housemaid and The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants.