The box office undoubtedly belonged to sequels fans waited far too long for in 2022. As it stands now, Top Gun: Maverick, which originally released in May, sits the global box office throne having taken in $1,488,732,821 in total. However, the Tom Cruise-led sequel’s reign may be just about over.
After taking in $64M and remaining the #1 film in the U.S. over the Christmas weekend, Avatar: The Way of Water now has a global box office total of $855.4M and, according to Fandango’s Erik Davis, will cross the $1B mark on Wednesday. When it does, it will move into the top 3 totals of 2022 and put Maverick firmly on its sights.
It seems likely that The Way of Water will ultimately fly right on by Maverick, but it’ll still have an incredible amount of work to do to catch up to its predecessor in the Avatar franchise. 2009’s Avatar sits at #1 on the all-time box office list just shy of $3B ($2.9B). That film only opened to about half of The Way of Water’ s first weekend haul, but had the benefit of multiple rereleases over the years.
