James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash dominated the long Christmas weekend with four-day earnings of $88 million, including $64 million for the three-day weekend proper.
While it’s lagging the previous installment at the same point during its run, Fire and Ash is still a monster, grossing another $181.2 million overseas for a global tally of $760.4 million through Sunday, including $217.7 million domestically and $542.7 million overseas. And with a week to go before the holidays wrap, it should be at $1 billion by the end of next weekend.
That would give Disney dominion over the only three movies to cross $1 billion at the 2025 worldwide box office, including Lilo & Stitch and Zootopia 2, which — no joke — stayed high on the Christmas chart five weeks after first opening as it crossed a near-record $561 million in China alone to finish Sunday with a cume of $1.420 billion (Avatar is also doing business in China).
While this is all great news for Disney — save for its December box office bomb Ella McCay from James L. Brooks — the parcity of billion-dollar earners is a sobering reminder for the industry as to why domestic box office revenue for 2025 will barely match 2024’s $8.8 billion.
There just wasn’t enough product due to the lingering delayed caused by COVID and strikes. The bright news: The eclectic mix of presents under the Christmas tree resulted in the best holiday in terms of overall domestic revenue since the pandemic and underscores the importance for having diversity of product.
A24’s high-profile period pic Marty Supreme — directed by Josh Safdie and starring Timothée Chalamet as a 1950s table tennis champion — was the biggest surprise in grabbing second place during a four-day holiday opening of $27.1 million, the best opening in the history of the indie studio. The pic’s Friday-Sunday haul was $17.5 million, putting it at No. 3.
Marty Supreme began made headlines the weekend before Christmas with a record-breaking per-location average of $145,913 across six locations in New York City and L.A., the best in A24’s history and the best of any film since 2016’s La La Land. Sporting a pricey budget of $60 million-$70 million, it is reportedly the most expensive movie made by the indie studio (period pics are expensive!). Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion and Tyler, the Creator also star in this tale of an aspiring table tennis champion angling to ping pong his way out of 1950s Lower East Side Manhattan.
Chalamet has stopped at nothing to help market the movie — including becoming the first person to stand atop The Sphere in Las Vegas — and it appears to be paying off. In the weeks leading to the film’s release, he wrote and directed a staged Zoom call with A24’s marketing team in which he presented increasingly ridiculous ideas to promote Marty Supreme. One of the ideas presented actually became reality: fly a bright orange rented blimp with the movie’s title imprinted on each side. While there was talk of a cross-country tour, the blimp is based in the Los Angeles area. The Zoom also resulted in the idea for Safdie and the cast to light the Empire State Building orange ahead of the New York premiere.
The big question facing Marty Supreme, which placed third for the Friday-Sunday weekend behind Zootopia 2 with $17.5 million, is whether it can break out and play to mainstream audiences, versus the more traditional specialty and awards voter crowd.
In a surprise upset, Chalamet’s film easily came in ahead of Sony’s Anaconda, which also opened Dec. 25 alongdide Focus Features’ specialty pic Song Sung Blue, starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson.
Anaconda, rebuffed by many critics, posted a four-day opening of $23.6 million for a global start of $14.7 million and fourth-place finish domestically. However, it almost lost the four-day weekend to Sony’s popular femme-fueled thriller The Housemaid, which took in a better-than-expected $23.1 million against a modest $36 million bdget. And for the three-day weekend itself, the well-reviewed, Paul Feig-directed film came in ahead of Anaconda with an estimated $14.9 million, versus $14.5 million.
Other holiday titles included Angel Studios’ faith-based David, which placed sixth for the four days with $16.7 million, including $12.1 million for the three days, for a promising cume of $49.2 million.
Paramount’s The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants — which opened Dec. 19 opposite Fire and Ash, David and The Housmaid — came in seventh with an estimated $14.1 million for the four-day holiday weekend and $10.9 million for the three. It’s domestic total is ho-hum $37.8 million.
Song Sung Blue followed with a four-day weekend gross of $11.5 million and is based on the 2008 documentary of the same name about Mike and Claire Sardina, who performed in the popular Neil Diamond tribute band Lightning & Thunder. Alongside David, Song Sung Blue boasts the highest audience ranking on Rotten Tomatoes (98 percent) of any Christmas title playing nationwide. It’s also been embraced by critics.
Universal’s Thanksgiving tentpole Wicked: For Good stayed in the top 10 chart as it crossed the $500 miilon mark globally, including an estimated domestic cume of $331.6 million through Sunday and $172.3 million overseas. It got clobbered in China, one of its final markets, where it opened to less than $1 million. And it’s looking less and less likely that the second part of Jon M. Chu’s adapation of the famed Broadway play will match the $770 milion earned globally by Wicked a year ago.
Christmas Day falling on a Thursday is a dream scenario for theater owners, since moviegoing picks ups in earnest in the later afternoon and continues unabated throughout the weekend. And the week between Christmas and New Year’s is one of the most lucrative for moviegoing, considering that schools and colleges are closed, with many adults off from work as well.
Estimates will be updated Monday.
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