TUESDAY AM: Avatar: The Way of Water has beaten Universal/Illumination’s Minions: The Rise of Gru as the second best Monday of the year with $16.2M. Rise of Gru had $16M. The best Monday of 2022 belongs to Top Gun: Maverick‘s Memorial Day of $33.8M. Running total for the James Cameron sequel is $150.3M domestic, and a near half billion worldwide. Read our Christmas weekend preview here.
MONDAY PM: Disney/20th Century Studio’s Avatar: The Way of Water is heading to a Monday around $16M which will take its four day total to $150.1M. Nothing to cry about as the Monday for the James Cameron directed movie bests the first Monday of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ($11.1M).
If Avatar 2 exceeds $16M today, that will rank as the second best Monday of 2022, besting the Monday July 4th gross of Universal/Illumination’s Minions: The Rise of Gru.
The top grossing Monday of the year belongs to the Memorial Day take of Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick which made $33.8M. A year ago, the first Monday of Sony/Marvel Studio’s Spider-Man: No Way Home grossed $37.1M, the third best Monday ever at the domestic box office.
The 3-day box office for Avatar: The Way of Water kept intact with what Disney called on Sunday AM, the sequel finaling at $134.1M. In regards to the sequel missing its $150M-$175M projections, many sources are calling tracking out on that one. This 3 hour 12 minute 3D opus should never have been comped to Marvel movies which are front-loaded; Avatar 2‘s box office fuel tied greatly to premium theater ticket sales (i.e. Imax, Dolby, 4DX, etc).
Currently, Avatar 2‘s Monday is emulating a similar Sunday-to-Monday decline to that of Disney’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story which went down -54% over that time span for a $17.6M Monday. Avatar 2‘s Sunday-to-Monday decline is looking like -56% after making $36.5M yesterday.