by Despite tremendous uncertainty regarding the nation’s public health crisis, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water has a solid start in China.
According to local box office advisory Artisan Gateway, the movie had made $15.2 million (RMB106 million) as of 12 p.m. local time on Friday, including Thursday night previews. According to current China Box Office estimates, Avatar 2 will end the weekend with an estimated $119 million to $128 million in sales (RMB830 million-RMB 890 million).
The Way of Water is expected to end its domestic run with $360 million (RMB 2.51 billion), which would make it Hollywood’s biggest film in the country this year (more than double Jurassic World: Dominion’s $157 million China haul) and the third-biggest U.S. title of all time in China. This projection comes from Maoyan, China’s largest ticketing app. Maoyan’s full-run predictions, a prediction that takes into account early sales rates, user ratings, and the performance trajectories of prior titles, are vulnerable to significant change during the first few days after release even in the best of circumstances. The unknown circumstances surrounding the extensive COVID outbreaks that are currently ravaging China’s major cities make it very difficult to predict how well Avatar 2 will perform financially.
Avatar 2’s career total is expected to range widely according to Artisan Gateway, from $315 million to $415 million (RMB 2.2 billion-RMB 2.9 billion), reflecting the volatility of the current situation.
Nearly all of the stringent “COVID zero” restrictions that had been in place from the beginning of the pandemic were abruptly lifted last week, according to China’s announcement of revisions to its public health response. The majority of testing procedures were dropped, and the previously required proof-of-health QR code was no longer required to enter most public areas. In response to mounting popular anger with living in constant lockdowns and rising infection rates in many Chinese cities, which some public health professionals already believed rendered “COVID zero” unsustainable, the government abruptly changed its policy.
On the surface, China’s unexpected social freedoms would appear to be beneficial for going to the theatre. According to estimates from Artisan Gateway, over 75% of Chinese movie theatres are open this weekend, up from fewer than 50% just two weeks ago. But soon after the relaxation, COVID-19 infection rates shot up, generating widespread concern and a deliberate self-isolation trend among the Chinese populace. It is now impossible to obtain accurate data on just how high China’s infection rates have risen, but anecdotal evidence from Beijing, including reports of overcrowded hospitals, businesses struggling due to a large number of absent employees, and largely empty streets, suggests a potentially massive outbreak is currently under way.
Avatar 2 could be able to entice a leery Chinese populace back into public areas, though. Few movies are as evocatively nostalgic for Chinese millennials as the first Avatar. The film was one of the first Hollywood blockbusters to hit the country when it began to experience its high-growth box office boom of the late aughts, and Avatar emerged as their most popular phenomenon.
When China had just 5,690 movie theatres in 2010, the first movie’s highest grossing amount was $202.6 million (today, there are over 82,000). The record set by Avatar in China was eventually broken (by Stephen Chow’s Journey to the West, which made $215 million in 2013) after three years and the building of thousands more theatres.
The original Avatar made a solid $58 million when it was re-released in China in March 2021 as part of a regulators’ effort to increase sales amid a pandemic slack period for both Chinese and Hollywood movies. This made it the fourth-highest-grossing American film that year.
The Way of Water’s fate in China will be determined by how the word of mouth surrounding it interacts with audience reluctance, and possibly even how far the sequel climbs the global record books.
