Box Office Report for January 22

Folks…he did it again. James Cameron is now the only filmmaker to have three films reach the $2 billion mark. To anyone who ever doubted him and said that Avatar: The Way of Water was going to be this catastrophic flop and that none of the sequels would get made: Never. Ever. Ever. Doubt. James. Cameron.

Hopefully, this will be understood from now on. Avatar: The Way of Water is now the only film in the COVID-19 era to surpass Spider-Man: No Way Home and reach the $2 billion mark, signaling that the moviegoing experience is alive and well and that the sequels may very well reach that same target.

Time will tell how profitable the upcoming sequels will be, but we will see all of them. Perhaps he’ll even team up with RRR filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli for the fifth one. If that happens, it’ll be an easy $4 billion movie (a man can dream, but he told him, “If you ever want to make a movie over here, let’s talk.” at the Critics Choice Awards).

As for newer movies this weekend, Missing opened in fourth position with a $9.3 million tally. It’s not terrible, but considering that the first film only cost $880.000 and the second film $7 million, it is a tad disappointing. But a film like this needs strong word-of-mouth, and reviews have so far been very good.

For the three January films that Hollywood studios have so far released, there hasn’t been a bad product, hopefully lifting the curse that January equals bad movies. There will be some bad movies in the future, but M3GAN (which has crossed the $100 worldwide mark this weekend), Plane, and Missing are all excellent films in their own right and have shown that January is no longer the dumping ground for movies.

Here’s the full list of the top ten films of the week:

1. Avatar: The Way of Water (Disney): $20M (-39.1%) – 3,790 theatres
2. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Universal/Dreamworks): $11.5M (-20.5%) – 3,611 theatres
3. M3GAN (Universal): $9.8M (-46.5%) – 3,628 theatres
4. Missing (Sony): $9.3M – 3,025 theatres
5. A Man Called Otto (Sony): $9.0M (-29.8%) – 3,802 theatres
6. Plane (Lionsgate): $5.2M (-48.9%) – 3,060 theatres
7. House Party (2023) (Warner Bros): $1.7M (-55.5%) – 1,400 theatres
8. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond (Crunchyroll): $1.4M – 1,473 theatres
9. The Whale (A24): $1.2M (-15.5%) – 1,591 theatres
10. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Disney): $1.2M – (49.1%) – 1,591 theatres

Source: Box Office Mojo