‘Avatar’ Makes Second Lap While ‘Babylon’ Bombs at Christmas Box Office

There wasn’t much sunny about this past weekend at the box office. A devastating storm and extremely low temperatures across much of the nation put a bit of a chill on the idea of moviegoing. Hell, I don’t know about you, but I came up with excuses to put off taking out the trash! Theater owners were reportedly already anticipating lower numbers, since Christmas Eve and Christmas Day fell on a Saturday and Sunday, which reduced the number of days that most people would have off from work. As such, the three new major studio releases, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, and Babylon found themselves iced out.

There is, however, one success story: Avatar: The Way of Water. 

Arctic blasts and worrisome flu chatter are apparently no match for James Cameron and his interplanetary adventures, with the second chapter of his saga bringing in an additional $56 million domestically in its second weekend. That number is likely to balloon to $84 million, factoring in Friday and Monday, all for a domestic total of $278 million. 

The international box office for the picture—which is being exhibited in 3D, premium large format, and, in some cases, a controversial high frame rate—is now estimated at $855 million. For any other movie, the producers and studio heads would be swimming in champagne, but as Cameron himself put it, his goal is “to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.” Most analysts have put that number at $2 billion.

Rarely does receipt-watching have this much drama to it, but it’s also rare for a writer-director-inventor-explorer to go on record as calling his project “the worst business case in movie history.” He’s a little less than halfway to the finish line after two weeks, and he’s got history behind him—the first Avatar was a slow-and-steady earner over many weeks, as was this summer’s Top Gun: Maverick.

Also, the tale of Jake Sully, the tulkun, and the ava-cloned Col. Quaritch does not have much in the way of competition for many coming weeks, as evidenced by the three other studio releases this weekend, all of which did poorly. Puss In Boots tallied $11.3 million this weekend (accruing $24.6 million since its mid-week opening), which isn’t exactly chump change but is still low for a family film in the Shrek-verse. The last Puss In Boots ultimately made $554 million globally, but that was back in 2011. 

Meanwhile, Naomi Ackie’s turn as pop legend Whitney Houston came in third place, with an estimated $7.5 to $9 million through Monday. By and large, few critics have been championing the latest music biopic, and it currently has a 46 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a 55 on Metacritic. 

Worst, through, was the awards season hopeful Babylon, Damien Chazelle’s kaleidoscopic three-hour ode to early Hollywood, starring A-listers Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt. The picture is a floparoonie (to put it in the terms the characters might use), earning a disastrous $5.3 through Monday. Though some critics were into it, it received a C+ on Cinemascore, which polls exiting ticket buyers. 

This is not the best news for Chazelle, whose last picture, First Man, did not exactly achieve escape box office velocity. Maybe he should have done what James Cameron did, and shoot nearly all of his next picture (and even a high percentage of the one after that) before this one hit screens.