The Way of Water gets a boost from China

Recommendation: If you haven’t yet seen Avatar: The Way of Water — IMAX, fifth row is the right way to do it. 4D seems cool, too, though a tad violent.

The film has earned $1.75B at the box office. Those earnings include $189.4m in China, despite a surge of covid infections there, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

• Chinese ticketing app Maoyan projects the film will peak at $222m — more than the $202m Avatar collected in China a decade ago, when there were ~5.7k movie screens in the country. Today, there are 82k+.

Attention could dwindle, though, with the Lunar New Year coming up, when a host of domestic films will hit theaters — among them, The Wandering Earth 2. The first Wandering Earth pulled in $700m in 2019 (and is on Netflix, in case you’re interested).

“We’re [going] back to theaters around the world,” Avatar director James Cameron told Variety. “They’re even going back to theaters in China.”

He added, “Enough with the streaming already — I’m tired of sitting on my ass.”