Avatar: Fire and Ash is set to continue its box office streak over this sleepy January weekend, landing at No. 1 for the fourth weekend in a row. The James Cameron franchise installment is coming in well ahead of the weekend’s new releases: Paramount horror Primate and Lionsgate’s Greenland 2: Migration.
Avatar has earned an estimated $5 million in ticket sales on Friday and is expected to pull in over $20 million at the domestic box office. While not performing as well as the first two Avatar films, Fire and Ash easily cleared the global $1 billion mark after three weekends in cinemas.
For its part, Primate is opening at over 2,900 locations, heading to an estimated $11 million weekend after earning $4.5 million on Friday. Johannes Roberts, known for horror thrillers like 47 Meters Down, directs Primate about a domesticated chimpanzee that turns on the family that raised him (and some unwitting houseguests) after becoming rabid. Oscar winner Troy Kotsur stars in the movie along with Johnny Sequoyah and Jessica Alexander.
Greenland 2, a sequel to the 2020 disaster movie, is expected to have an $8 million to $10 million North American bow. Lionsgate has the domestic rights on the Gerard Butler starrer from director Ric Roman Waugh that takes place after the events of the first film, when a comet wreaked havoc on Earth. In the follow-up, the central family must leave their Greenland bunker in search of a new home in post-apocalyptic Europe.
Outside of Avatar 3, notable holdovers at the multiplex include the Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney success story The Housemaid and Timothee Chalamet’s awards season frontrunner Marty Supreme, the former of which earned $3.3 milliom while the latter earned $2.2 million in Friday ticket sales.
Elsewhere, Sony’s adventure comedy Anaconda passed a milestone, earning over $100 million at the global box office ($101.6 million, in fact). The Jack Black and Paul Rudd-starrer made $1.28 million on Friday from 3,075 locations, with a projected $4.6 million domestic weekend.