Avatar has regained its position as the top-selling global release over the weekend. James Cameron’s 2009 release saw fresh ticket sales as the sci-fi movie was released in China.
In 2010, it unseated the previous top grosser Titanic, another blockbuster from the same Cameron. However, in 2019, it had to give up its box office crown to Avengers: End Game. Now, the crown is back where it rightly belongs.
In 2019 Avengers: Endgame had a box office collection of $2.797 billion. However, as of Saturday, Avatar’s box office gross collection crossed $2,802 billion.
Joe and Anthony Russo, the directors of Avengers: Endgame, accepted that their game had ended and sportingly took to social media and congratulated Cameron. They posted: “Passing the gauntlet back to you.”
China’s Film Bureau had pre-approved Avatar in 2020 but it remained in the vault of Disney during the pandemic. The sci-fi epic was a means by which China attempted to draw crowds back to the theaters and give these businesses a fillip as new films have not been released in a while, due to the pandemic.
Producer Jon Landau said that they were proud that the film reached the great milestone of being the biggest grosser but they were most thrilled that the film was back in theaters, as the times were unprecedented. He also thanked their Chinese fans for their support.
Landau added that they were working hard on the next Avatar films. He also said that they were looking forward to sharing the continuation of the epic story for many more hears.
The next new film in the Avatar franchise is scheduled to be released in 2022. It will be the first among the five that have been planned to be produced in the next decade. Disney had recently acquired the film, in 2019 from 20th Century Fox, although it had already been licensed to build a land in Florida’s Animal Kingdom theme park.
