Industry News
by saidiontheside

saidi’s take – 1/10/2023

Hello everyone,

  • The first full weekend of 2023, “Avatar: The Way of Water” continued to dominate with approx. $46 million.  That means it’s crossed $500 million domestic total.  The new movie “M3gan”came in at #2 with a surprising $30 million.  Unfortunately, the top 2 movies alone were over 70% of the total weekend box office of $104 million total and only 3 movies made over $5 million this past weekend.  In 2020s first weekend the entire top 10 made over $5 each.
  • Internationally, “Avatar: The Way of the Water” went over $1.7 BILLION worldwide to become the #7 biggest box office worldwide (mostly due to International sales because domestically it’s #16 on the all time list).
  • James Cameron has said that since “Avatar: The Way of Water” has now made over $1.7 billion worldwide he will be making the 4th and 5th movie in the Avatar series.  Not sure if he’ll be directing all the movies though.
  • Executives at Lionsgate and Disney have both said (separately) that they would like all their employees to return to the office to work on Monday – Thursday.  Lionsgate has said that Fridays will still be work from home days and might even be half days with work ending at 1pm.
  • It was rumored that NBC/Universal is starting layoffs in certain departments however it’s said that “dozens” of people are getting laid off, NOT “hundreds”.

Little bit of humor:

Although the “Avatar” box office is WAY AHEAD (“Puss In Boots” is only around $200 million worldwide total). These are the current numbers according to reviews.