The anticipated box office takes for the much-anticipated fantasy epic Avatar: The Way of Water have increased. On December 16, James Cameron’s Avatar 2 opens in theaters. It has a reported $350 million budget. Should Avatar: The Way of Water perform well at the box office, it will be the second in a series with plans for at least three more episodes. It has a lot to live up to because Cameron’s 1997 picture Titanic, which was at the time the highest-grossing movie ever, came before it and is presently the most successful movie of all time.

If Avatar: The Way of Water is to make back its enormous investment, it will apparently need to rank among the highest-grossing movies ever. The Wrap, however, forecasts that the movie will make at least $150 million in its opening weekend (up from the earlier forecast of $135 million). 

With China being a crucial market for its release, it is impossible to predict how much money the movie will bring in internationally over its first weekend. The movie would need to make at least $2 billion in revenue overall to cover its entire budget, a milestone that hasn’t been accomplished since before the coronavirus epidemic but was almost topped by Spider-Man: No Way Home’s $1.9 billion take.