China ‘Avatar’ Re-release Poised To Reclaim No. 1 Box Office Title

China’s re-release of Avatar is set to oust Disney and Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame from its top position as the best-grossing film ever.

Avatar has found its way to the big screen once again in China this weekend with the country anticipating a huge post-COVID box office turnout. Deadline reports that on Friday, the film made $3.5 million, making the country’s estimated sales total $209.9 million. Avatar also saw a big Saturday, bringing the weekend’s working total to $5.8 million.

Arriving in July 2019, Endgame held the spot for 18 months, pulling in worldwide sales of $2,789.2 billion that month. The Marvel film grossed $858.37 million domestically and $1.939 billion internationally for a $2.797 billion total. Comparatively, Avatar stood at $760.5 million, $2.029 billion overseas, and $2.789 billion worldwide. When Avatar released in 2009, it dethroned the 1997 film Titanic, with Avatar assuming the title until Endgame arrived 10 years later.

In September, Avatar director James Cameron announced that filming for Avatar 2 was finished.

“Well, [COVID-19] hit us like it hit everybody,” Cameron said at the time. “We lost about four and a half months of production. As a result of that, we’ve rolled around one more full year for a release in December of [2022]. That’s been announced already. Now, that doesn’t mean that I have an extra year to finish the film because the day we deliver Avatar 2 we’ll just start working on finishing Avatar 3. So where we are right now, I’m down in New Zealand shooting. We’re shooting the remainder of the live action. We’ve got about 10 percent left to go. We’re 100 percent complete on Avatar 2 and we’re sort of 95 percent complete on Avatar 3.”