Long Range Forecast: AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH Tracking to Exceed THE WAY OF WATER’s $134M Opening

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Long Range Forecast — December 19, 2025

Avatar: Fire and Ash | Disney/20th Century Studios

Domestic Opening Weekend Range: $135M – $165M

The third installment of the Avatar series arrives to close out the year with less pressure to prove itself than its previous entries, but that doesn’t mean it’s not expected to perform. We expect this title to be the biggest Christmas corridor release since…well, Avatar: The Way of Water. A modest (in context) opening weekend and a long PLF run well in to January should keep exhibitors happy.

To return to the film’s opening frame: Avatar: Fire and Ash debuts during the third weekend in December, the same frame as the first Avatar in 2009 ($77M domestic opening) and The Way of Water in 2022 ($134.1M domestic opening). The first Avatar held practically steady between its debut and Christmas the following weekend, dropping only -1.8 percent, while The Way of Water faced a more typical -52.8 percent drop. One factor that could nudge Fire and Ash past The Way of Water is the fact that, per data research firm Omdia, the global footprint of premium screens has been trending steadily upwards, from 7,550 in 2023 to “nearly 8,000” in 2024. The Way of Water also up against the final weekend of the 2022 World Cup, competition not faced by Fire and Ash. More time will tell us whether the critical consensus for Fire and Ash is as positive as for Avatar and The Way of Water, which had 81 percent and 76 percent approval ratings, respectively, from critics listed on Rotten Tomatoes.

The presence of Avatar: Fire and Water on the schedule augurs good things for exhibitors; our predicted $135M – $165M range is in line with the approximate $140M made by the entire top ten over the equivalent weekend in 2024, when the big new releases were Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3 ($60.1M) and Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King ($35.4M).

In other tracking updates, our predicted debut forecast for The Running Man has continued to edge downwards, to the point that it may be unlikely to capture the number one spot from Now You See Me: Now You Don’t. Tracking is down significantly for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, out December 5, and is slightly up for both Wicked: For Good (out next weekend) and Zootopia 2 (12/5). See the numbers below.