SATURDAY AM UPDATE: Refresh for more analysis and chart Coming out of this weekend, by mid-week, Disney/20th Century Studios/Lightstorm’s Avatar: The Way of Water will easily surpass The Avengers as the No. 10 highest grossing movie ever in U.S./Canada with $623.3M. The James Cameron directed pic is expected to gross between $14M-$16M for a seventh straight No. 1 weekend streak. Avatar 2‘s seven-weekend run at No. 1 ties with the original Avatar and the Henry Fonda-Katherine Hepburn Oscar-winning movie On Golden Pond.

By the end of this weekend, on the high-end, Avatar at $620.9M looks to fly past Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘s domestic take of $620.1M as the 11th highest grossing movie of all-time in U.S./Canada. With a worldwide take now of $2.074 billion, Avatar 2 is the 4th highest global release of all-time having passed Force Awakens’ $2.07 billion, putting Cameron with the top three of the of top 4 movies of all-time: Avatar No. 1 ($2.9 billion), Titanic No. 3 ($2.19 billion) and Way of Water No. 4. Avengers: Endgame is No. 2 worldwide with $2.799B.

Among all the Oscar nominated Best Pictures this year, the 4x nominated Avatar 2 is the only movie expected to make buckets of money heading into Oscar night on March 12 — and that’s really all organic given its blockbuster momentum. Avatar still has all its Imax and a big chunk of PLF. I hear they cede their Dolby screens to Universal’s Knock at the Cabin next weekend, that movie hopefully providing a little lift to the sleepy winter box office, which will go into overdrive over Presidents Day weekend with the $120M 4-day start of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

With no major studio wide theatrical release this weekend, all films are looking at around a $71.2M take, which is up a great +103% from a year ago when the marketplace was shackled by Omicron, all titles grossing $35M.

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