James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash is performing as well as expected. Or is it? The science fiction film has already grossed $762 million globally, making it one of 2025’s best-performing releases. Two more sequels, Avatar 4 and Avatar 5, are already in early stages of production and scheduled for 2029 and 2031, respectively, though Cameron has insisted that he will only proceed if Avatar 3 makes as much money as the previous two movies.
Fire and Ash’s $350 million budget means it has to hit the billion mark to be considered a decent money-maker. This shouldn’t be a problem since more and more people are walking into theaters to watch the latest saga. The two previous installments also crossed the $1 billion mark, so the current one shouldn’t fail to do so. However, the latest flick might end a 16-year franchise streak. Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water each emerged as the highest-grossing films in 2009 and 2022, respectively, but Fire and Ash might struggle to reach that milestone for 2025.
‘Ne Zha 2’ Is Currently the Best Performing Movie of 2025
Released on 29 January 2025, Ne Zha 2 made $2.2 billion worldwide against a production budget of $80 million, making it the first fully animated and non-American film in history to earn over $2 billion. This was a stunning improvement from the first installment. Released in 2019, Ne Zha made $742.7 million.
Interestingly, most of the film’s dollars were from local ticket sales. According to The Economist, less than two percent of ticket sales came outside mainland China. Various reports indicate that Ne Zha 2 was extremely popular in its home country. In some areas, midnight screenings were full, a rare phenomenon for a film targeted towards younger audiences.
Ne Zha 2’s performance makes it the fifth highest-grossing movie of all time, behind only Titanic, Avatar, Avengers: Endgame, and Avatar: The Way of Water. Can Fire and Ash knock it out of the top five?
Can ‘Fire and Ash’ Cross the $2 Billion Mark?
Fire and Ash will struggle to knock out Ne Zha 2 from the throne of 2025’s box office king since it’s already performing worse than The Way of Water. Despite already being the best-performing American film of 2025 and grossing more than Avatar‘s weekend debut of $77 million, the new film’s opening weekend domestic gross of $89 million was a significant decline from the $134.1 million made by its predecessor three years ago. Its second week gross of $63 million is also 29% less than that of the previous film.
Worse still, Avatar 3 has stronger competition. While The Way of Water only had to duel DreamWorks’ Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Cameron’s latest flick is currently sharing theaters with several critically acclaimed releases, including The Housemaid, Marty Supreme, David, and The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants.
The strong competition will continue to chip at Fire and Ash’s box office ceiling. On top of that, the movie has the added disadvantage of being the third in the franchise. The Way of Water was highly anticipated because it had been 13 years since the previous installment came out. There has been nothing to make fans excited about the latest Na’vi adventure, and the lower Rotten Tomatoes score isn’t helping either.
So, what does this mean for the franchise’s future? James Cameron is likely to be irked by anything less than $2 billion. The filmmaker has also been sounding agitated in recent weeks, constantly calling out the rise of streaming. He might, therefore, conclude that no future Avatar film will ever soar to the heights reached by the previous installments. Consequently, Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 might just not happen.
