Fire and Ash’ Crosses $1 Billion Globally

“Avatar: Fire and Ash” is blazing past $1 billion at the global box office after 18 days of release. Those ticket sales include $306 million domestically and $777.1 million internationally for a grand total of $1.083 billion.

The third installment has surpassed the billion-dollar benchmark a bit slower than its predecessor, 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which joined the $1 billion club after a brisk 14 days, and 2009’s “Avatar,” which achieved the benchmark after 17 days. Of course, those films remained major draws on the big screen — topping the box office for seven consecutive weekends — and eventually became two of the biggest movies in history. The original earned $2.9 billion while the sequel generated $2.3 billion.

Whether “Avatar 3” has the staying power to surpass $2 billion in worldwide revenues remains a question mark. Reaching the coveted milestone will rely heavily on international audiences, which powered the first two films to stratospheric heights. The first “Avatar” earned a mammoth $2.1 billion from just overseas markets, while the sequel generated a massive $1.65 billion from foreign territories.

“Avatar: Fire and Ash” is Disney’s third release of 2025 to cross the $1 billion mark, following “Lilo & Stitch” and “Zootopia 2.” (For context, none of its rivals have fielded a single billion-dollar film since 2023.) These movies are helping to cap off a banner year for the studio, which has generated more than $6.58 billion in global revenues across 16 films. Disney is the biggest studio in terms of marketshare, having outgrossed its rivals by at least $2 billion at the box office.

“Fire and Ash” centers on Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and their family as they take on a new fiery foe. James Cameron, the only director in history with three $2 billion blockbusters to his name (“Titanic” is the third), had planned a total of five films in the otherworldly series, set on the alien moon of Pandora. However he has since joked that he’ll hold a press conference to determine whether he’ll move ahead with “Avatar 4” and “Avatar 5” — or if the franchise will conclude with the third adventure.

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves [with ‘Avatar 4’] because, first of all, we’ve got to make some money with this one,” Cameron told Variety ahead of opening weekend for “Fire and Ash.” “Every time we go out, we have to prove this crazy business-case yet again.”