Avatar: The Path of Water has grossed more than $1.7 billion at the global box office, giving Disney a boost as some Wall Street analysts warn its famed blockbuster engine has begun to run out of steam.
The movie tour at the weekend ago the path of water seventh highest-grossing film of all time, ahead of jurassic world. The original AvatarReleased in 2009, it remains the biggest moneymaker in movie history with $2.9 billion in total grosses.
Paul Dergarabedian, a senior analyst at Comscore, said the film seemed to have more scope and could gross $2 billion. “For Avatar to continue to top the box office in its fourth week is really impressive,” he said. “This is not slowing down at all.”
The weekend unveiling means the pricey sci-fi flick is nearing profitability for Disney, analysts say, meaning director James Cameron is likely to get the green light for his plans to release three more installments of the Serie.
He Avatar The franchise came to Disney via the 2019 acquisition of Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox for $71 billion, a deal whose value to Disney has recently been called into question by some analysts. It was the crowning transaction for Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger, who returned to the company in late November after the ouster of his successor, Bob Chapek.
Now, as Iger maps out a new strategy for Disney, some on Wall Street say a top priority should be to revitalize its movie studios, particularly Pixar, Disney Animation and Lucasfilm.
Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed Partners, said the push to create new content for the Disney Plus streaming service had put a lot of pressure on his studios. Steady hit makers like Lucasfilms Star Wars and Marvel, home to box office heroes like Spiderman Y The Avengers — “I feel more and more tired from excessive use,” he said.
“Disney has never been concerned with volume, it was always about quality at the highest level, however the streaming business requires massive amounts of content to drive. [subscriptions] and minimize turnover,” he said last week. “By ramping up the content so fast. . . the power of content with consumers is diluted. It feels less special.”
Critics point to Pixar’s disappointing performance last year Light-year — the latest installment of the successful toy story franchise, and Disney Animation’s Strange world as examples of big mistakes last year.
Disney’s animation business was in a doldrums when Iger first became CEO in 2005. He moved quickly to acquire Pixar from Apple, a deal credited with revitalizing the company’s animated work. Subsequently, Iger oversaw the successful acquisitions of Marvel and Lucasfilm. But there are few obvious acquisition targets that can transform the business today.
Greenfield adds that “much of the content that has disappointed in the last two years was greenlit at the end of Iger’s first run as CEO.”
Despite such concerns, Disney still had four of the top 10 movies of 2022, including the path of water and three Marvel movies: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Y Thor: Love and Thunder. Disney movies held three of the top 10 movies in the US last week, according to Comscore.
Disney is also promoting its line of movies for this year, the company’s 100th anniversary. Among them is that of Marvel. ant man and the wasp a new version of The little Mermaid, a fifth installment of the Indiana Jones franchise and To wish.
A tentative long-term schedule also has Avatar sequels planned for 2024, 2026, and 2028. The third Avatar movie has already been filmed and the fourth movie is in the works.
With a reported budget of $350 million, the bar facing the path of water to achieve profitability is high due to marketing and other costs, not to mention the large share of box office receipts that goes to theaters.
“The most important thing for [Disney] it’s that the film is doing very well outside of the United States,” said Chad Beynon, an analyst at Macquarie. “In the US it will generate a little over half a billion dollars, but outside the US it could generate $1.5 billion.”
Cameron told interviewer Chris Wallace last week that “it looks like with the momentum the movie has right now, we’ll easily break even in the next few days.”
He added: “I can’t seem to get out of this, I’ll have to do these other sequels.”