Dale Cooper

It's not impossible. It is highly, highly improbable. Never mind the fact that Avatar had insane holds in January, it also kept its 3D screens until Alice arrived early Mars. There is an argument that A2 will have much better legs because of the skew to IMAX/PLF than your regular big movie, but it will be losing them mid February to Ant Man. If Avatar had lost its 3D screens mid February instead, it probably would have made quite a bit less.

I mean, it depends on what you want to achieve. If you want to have the best 3rd weekend with premiere the friday before Christmas, you would want NYD to be the a Friday.

For third weekend? NYD on a Friday, as Avatar and TFA had.

I think third weekend. Hard to see a non Christmas movie that beats that for a long long time, and probably needs the same calender configuration as TFA had to be able to beat it. Feels like such a movie, like TFA, would have beaten the OW record as well.

Sure, Jumanji had an incredible increase. From a much smaller weekend, though. But let's use Jumanji - it made another 210m from it's NY weekend, from a sizeably smaller weekend. Sounds pretty good to me for Avatar as well.

While I agree in general that last year isn't a good barometer for drops next weekend (because of external factors last year), I am actually not sure it is applicable to Avatar. It's very common that movies landing 20-25m or lower during Christmas weekend to increase a bit during NY weekend, however no movie has ever increased from a 63m weekend. It has just never happened. Sure, it would quite possibly have done a bit more last weekend if it wasn't for the storm and it might have ended up being more flat instead if so, but then again, pretty much only one movie has managed to do so as well, and that was with a snow storm weekend. Want to hazard a guess which film that is?

It's definitely better than when the 1st is on the Saturday. But I'd still say it's not inflated for being a holiday weekend. The calender configuration that Avatar had (Friday being the 1st) would make the weekend inflated. As for comparing it with No Way Home - it will obviously not be able to post the same holds past January, that's for sure. But it very much can have better holds the first couple of weekends after this, to make up for the comparatively worser holds later on.

If it does 24m on Friday, and about 65m for the weekend I'd think this have a genuine chance to reach 700m.

21.7?

My favorite is Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Incredible first two features also with The Graduate. More recently I would go for Ex Machina, Whiplash, Lady Bird and Nightcrawler.

True, not all films do, but almost all sequels to huge films does (at least, almost all films released a couple of years after). It's very unlikely this will not (I can barely think of a single sequel that has done so). Of course, if China comes good and does 800m instead of 200m, it could increase a bit.

As for the possibility for A3 to outperform A2, I highly doubt that. It would need China to step up big for that to happen. Sequels to huge movies that comes out a few years after the last tend to go down quite a bit. I see absolutely no reason for this to not do so (unless of course, exchange rates gets back to A1 level). After all, Avatar is no LOTR.

Anectotally, this is exactly my experience as well. I think it's a pretty good measure of how it actually is.

Yes, sure, let's call everyone that rewatches it a stan and then the GP wouldn't rewatch it. Good point!

I mean, do people really think that James Cameron is the best director or something? There's certainly thing he does better than anyone else, but the best director? Come on. I'm not sure anectodal evidence is gonna get you anywhere. It's pretty evident there's a lot of people going multiple times to see this. I don't think there's any doubt about that.

Let's agree to disagree about that, because this is actually not really worth discussing as both these numbers are, at the very least, highly unlikely to come true.

Higher is just relative. I think, barring external factors, there is 0% chance for it to stop with 550m. I would at least think it's a non-zero possibility to reach 870m. Not really worth talking about, though. My point was never to say that it was probable to reach that, just comparably more.

Well, I don't really think it's going to do it. I'm just saying it could do it. I don't think it's possible to just get 550m at this point. It would have to drastically change trajectory from here on to do so, and let's not forget that Rogue One had much more competition than The Way of Water through January. Also, the bolded is not really true. If it performs exactly similar from the second Wednesday (that is 10% higher) it's going to end up with....870m

Sure, very, very, very unlikely. But here's some food for thought: after first week, both Avatar and The Way of Water have remarkably consistent compared to each other. Similar weekdays in the first week, similar Christmas eve, similar Christmas Day/Boxing Day, similar weekdays in second week, probably similar NYD performance. The first Avatar had limited 3D screens back in the day which probably made it a bit more backloaded than what it could have been, The Way of Water has instead limited IMAX/PLFs. If it keeps on following Avatar after holidays, it will end up with....840m. (now, I don't for a second think it will do this) Anyway, I'd say unless there's some external factors impacting box office it cannot miss 550m.

The thing about IronJimbo's prediction is that, while clearly extremely optimistic, it is more probably than some of the predictions still thrown around in here. For example, I'd think there's clearly a higher probability it hits 870m than finishes at 550m, because it's basically 0% chance for that barring some external factors.

Are there any breakdowns of gross in different formats for the last few days? Would be quite interesting to better get a grasp of what legs can be expected post holiday.

I need to know the year end numbers for it, but as of now I wouldn't rule it out.

It has continued to do really, really well from what I can see. Where I'm from I would think it has had about a 95% occupancy this week, while playing over 25 times a day. Did not expect this development after last weeks weekdays. The local IMAX screen has pretty much sold out all good screenings throughout next week already. Considering how it has performed it should hold very well into and through the next week until January 9th wheen schools are back. As a side note, Avatar was at around 780k admits (I think) when after school break was over, I would think this will be in the same ballpark. Then, of course, Avatar sold another 700k ticket after that, The Way Of Water won't be able to replicate that at all. To beat the first in terms of gross it probably needs about 1030k admits, to beat the all time record another 60k.

Absolutely, it's about getting the right balance. There's many aspects of it. For example, in my town right now Avatar is by far the most popular film. The movie theatres here probably would have done good to give just about every screen these days between Christmas and New Years to Avatar, to maximize profits right now. However, if they had done so they'd probably have lost a lot of the audience that watches other movies (who wouldn't have come if they can't go between these days) whereas with Avatar people would probably just see it next week or at a later screening instead.

I'm sure most does. I'm just saying that if you're willing to pay big for the ticket, you would logically be more willing to pay more for things around.