Shocking: Avatar 3 Fails To Beat Animation Film’s Opening

Given the franchise’s hype and the box office milestones achieved by its predecessors, trade analysts and audiences have believed that James Cameron’s cinematic epic Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third installment of Avatar series, failed to emerge as the biggest opener of 2025.

Avatar : Fire and Ash opened to a global haul of $137 million on its first day, which is still not enough to top this year’s biggest debut. In what can be termed as irony, Avatar 3 failed to beat the first day figures of an animation film, Zootopia 2. This is because of the moderate start taken by Avatar 3 in North America which impacted the global opening.

Zootopia 2 took a staggering start with $150 million opening after its release on November 26th. Avatar : Fire and Ash was expected to rake in bigger numbers due to the massive hype. But, the film underperformed North America with $ 36 Million on first day including muted premieres show performance. Despite a promising start in overseas territories with $ 100 Million, the film couldn’t surpass Zootopia 2.

What is more disappointing is that the third part couldn’t even collect half of the opening day numbers of the second part, Avatar : The Way of Water, which took a phenomenal opening in 2022 with $441 million start. While the first two installments collected over $ 2 Billion gross each in their full run, the Fire and Ash will need a huge turn around to match its ambitious box office targets.

The film’s success will now depend on strong word of mouth. It will need to perform exceedingly well on weekdays and during the upcoming Christmas holidays. Reaching $ 1.5 Billion mark will be a huge benchmark for the film.