Avatar: The Way of Water has officially become the sixth film in history to earn $2 billion at the global box office, and director James Cameron has now had three of his films reach that impressive milestone.
As reported by Variety, Avatar: The Way of Water now sits alongside such other $2 billion earners as Cameron's Avatar and Titanic, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
While it's undoubtedly impressive that Cameron's films account for half of the films to reach $2 billion at the global box office, it's also an incredible feat that Zoe Saldaña has been in four of them - both Avatar films as Neytiri and both Avengers films as Gamora.
Avatar: The Way of Water is also getting ever closer to meeting Cameron's pre-release comments where he said this sequel had to be the "third or fourth highest-grossing film in history" to turn a profit. With a global box office amount of $2.02 billion in just six weeks, it is only a short way from passing the fourth- and fifth-biggest movies of all time in Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($2.07 billion) and Avengers: Infinity War ($2.04 billion) to achieve that goal.
Variety notes that certain analysts believe the film only needed to make $1.5 billion to make a profit but, either way, Avatar: The Way of Water continues to soar.
It still has a ways to go to reach the mountaintop that is Avatar's $2.9 billion, and a bit shorter of a way to pass Titanic's $2.19 billion and Avengers: Endgame's $2.79 billion.
Avatar earned another $20 million at the domestic box office this weekend, and has brought in $598 million for its entire run in North America. Internationally, it has raked in another $1.4 billion.
Elsewhere in the domestic box office world, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish took second place with $11.5 million, M3GAN took third with $9.8 million, Missing brought in $9.3 million and took third place, and A Man Called Otto rounded out the top five with $9 million.
For more, check out how James Cameron is choosing a new narrator for Avatar 3, how Avatar 3 will feature fire Na'vi, and our review of Avatar: The Way of Water.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
source https://www.ign.com/articles/avatar-the-way-of-water-has-become-the-sixth-film-in-history-to-earn-2-billion-at-the-global-box-office