By Ben Miller
Avatar: The Way of Water made most of the money from this weekend's box office. James Cameron's follow-up to 2009's Avatar was the unsurprising winner of the weekend with $134 million. Oddly, that number is far below expectations for a supremely expensive film, which is in the realm of $250 million. That doesn't mean all is said and done for the film's commercial chances. The rest of the box office only managed $18 million. It's still realistic for The Way of Water to end up as the highest grossing film of the year not named Top Gun: Maverick.
It also helps that Way of Water is playing on more expensive IMAX and 3D screens. The film is well-regarded by critics (78% on Rotten Tomatoes) and has an A Cinemascore. If anything can have legs, it's probably this.
| Weekend Box Office (actuals) Dec 16th-18th 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = Recommended |
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| WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS) | LIMITED / PLATFORM |
 AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER |
 THE WHALE |
| 1 🔺★ AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER $134.1*NEW* 4202 screens |
1 🔺 EMPIRE OF LIGHT $233k (cum. $460k) 436 screens |
| 2 BLACK PANTHER WAKANDA FOREVER $5.3 (cum. $418.9) 3380 screens |
2 SPOILER ALERT $208k (cum. $1.2) 771 screens |
| 3 VIOLENT NIGHT $5 (cum. $35) 3528 screens |
3 🔺 THE WHALE $170k (cum. $596k) 6 screens |
| 4 STRANGE WORLD $2.2 (cum. $33.8) 2870 screens |
4 THE MEAN ONE $112k (cum. $445k) 146 screens |
| 5 ★ THE MENU $1.6 (cum. $32) 1875 screens |
5 ★ THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN $101k (cum. $8.8) 165 screens |
|
6 ★ DEVOTION $780k (cum. $18.6) 2211 screens |
6 ★ TÁR $42k (cum. $5.4) 63 screens |
 THE FABELMANS |
 EMPIRE OF LIGHT |
|
7 ★ THE FABELMANS $744k (cum. $8.7) 955 screens |
7 ★ ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (doc) $34k (cum. $218k) 48 screens |
|
8 BLACK ADAM $446k (cum. $167.7) 1304 screens |
8 THE SPARRING PARTNER $24k (cum. $121k) 11 screens |
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only 8 films are currently in wide release which is very disappointing for the holiday season. In addition to the wide releases, It's a wonderful Life got an event style reprisal on over a thousand screens. |
8 ★ DECISION TO LEAVE $16k (cum. $1.9) 23 screens |
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We keep complaining about it, but The Way of Water sucks up a lot of screens and Hollywood didn't bother to counterprogram. It's not all bad news. Darren Aronofsky's The Whale is still doing exceptional business on very limited screens, earning over $28k per screen. It finally expands this week, so we will see if it is able to make any actual box office dent.
Next Weekend: With Christmas on Sunday, the box office gets pushed out a day. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish releases on Wednesday while Damien Chazelle's Babylon and the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody drops on Friday. Expect The Way of Water to repeat as champ, but it will be interesting to see its Christmas box office receipts before the public can make a grand declaration of success/failure.
What did you see this weekend? Christmas classics White Christmas and It's A Wonderful Life (althrough I didn't watch in a theater) were in the cards for me as well as James Cagney's Oscar-winning performance in Yankee Doodle Dandy. I also squeezed in a Nicole Kidman double feature first-time watches with Rabbit Hole and the anti-Christmas film Eyes Wide Shut. Big surprise...she's incredible in both of them.