- Avatar: Fire and Ash achieved victory for the fifth consecutive week at both the domestic and global box offices, but its performance is starting to flag.
- The third entry in the fantasy franchise helmed by James Cameron is significantly underperforming compared to 2009’s Avatar and 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water.
- 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple was only $300,000 away from No. 1 at the domestic box office, but its debut comes in well under previous projections.
The Na’vi have won the box office battle again, but the tide of war is turning.
Avatar: Fire and Ash secured its fifth consecutive win on both the domestic and global charts this weekend, earning $13.3 million in the former region, and $57.8 million in the latter, per Comscore. That brings the third entry in James Cameron’s environmental fantasia to a domestic gross of $363.5 million, and a global gross of $1.3 billion.
These are staggering numbers for sure, earning the film the No. 3 spot on both the domestic and global leaderboards of 2025. This weekend’s performance also narrowly edged 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple off the top spot, as the horror sequel stuck a disappointing $13 million domestic premiere and $29.2 globally. But Avatar‘s box office dominance belies a concerning set of stats for anyone invested in the future of the franchise.
Daniel McFadden/Lionsgate
Fire and Ash is burning hot — perhaps too hot — and too fast to keep up with its predecessors. Both 2009’s franchise starter Avatar and the 2022 sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, were performing significantly better at this point in their release cycles.
By weekend 5, Avatar had grossed nearly $500,000 domestically, while The Way of Water had earned $517,600. By the end of their runs, both films had easily crossed the $2 billion threshold globally — a feat that may be out of reach for Fire and Ash if current projections hold.
The Bone Temple, meanwhile, which arrives in theaters only seven months after the release of the sequel it spins off from. Variety projected the film would gross between $20 million and $22 million domestically in its premiere, an estimate upheld by Deadline Hollywood. Though the otherworldly zombie thriller has received plenty of glowing praise, it fell significantly short of those projections in its debut.
Elsewhere at the box office, Zootopia 2 continues to add cash to its coffers, with an $8.7 million domestic take in weekend 8, and a $33 million take globally. The film now stands at over $1.7 billion from the global market, making it the highest-grossing animated film in Hollywood history.
Paul Feig and Josh Safdie have also wrought genuine original hits with their respective 2025 releases, The Housemaid and Marty Supreme. Though the former film was adapted from a novel by Freida McFadden, both films represent welcome success where original ideas are concerned, after a glut of sequels from Zootopia 2 to Wicked: For Good to Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 dominated the box office.
The Housemaid came in at No. 4 domestically in its fifth week of release with an $8.5 million take. The pulpy thriller starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney now boasts over $100 million from domestic proceeds alone on an estimated $35 million budget. Marty Supreme, meanwhile, came in at No. 5 domestically, also in week 5, with a $5.4 million take.
Next weekend, the crop of films vying for box office glory doesn’t contain any clear hits. But if Avatar: Fire and Ash‘s performance continues to flag, Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson’s sci-fi thriller Mercy could vault to No. 1.
The new film from Kazakh-Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, known for directing and producing screenlife thrillers like Searching and Profile, follows a detective (Pratt) who must prove to an AI judge that he didn’t murder his wife. Next weekend also sees the releases of Return to Silent Hill, another foreboding adaptation of lore from the beloved video game franchise, and the literary adaptation H is For Hawk, starring Claire Foy.