Avatar Fire and Ash Box Office: James Cameron film advances open strongly in India

Avatar: Fire and Ash began selling IMAX advance tickets last week, with bookings for all other formats opening yesterday. The initial response has been strong. With over a week to go for release, the film has sold over 50,000 tickets across the two national chains for the weekend as of this morning. That amounts to more than Rs. 3 crore in money. Overall, the weekend advance has climbed past Rs. 4 crore gross.
Strong as these numbers are, they fall short in comparison to Avatar: The Way of Water. At the same time, before release, Avatar 2 had raked in over Rs. 12 crore in pre-sales. To be fair, Avatar 2 was on sale for a longer time, while for Avatar 3, this was effectively the first full day of sales in most cinemas. Still, the gap is considerable, and the initial rush isn’t matching the frenzy seen last time.
This also aligns with the trend in other markets across the world, where pre-sales are down in comparison with Avatar 2. The reason is straightforward: Avatar 2 was a long-awaited sequel to a box office zeitgeist, which was the biggest movie in the world, while this is another Avatar film in three years. The pent-up demand for an Avatar film that propelled Avatar 2 to a sizeable head start in early demand, isn’t at play this time.
That said, this is a James Cameron film, the maestro who famously says not to judge his movies until the third weekend. Advances are expected to catch up closer to release, and the gap between the first-day numbers of the two films would be far narrower than what the current pre-sales are. At Pinkvilla Predict, we are forecasting the film to collect Rs. 30-35 crore NETT (Rs. 36-42 crore GROSS) in India on its first day. Beyond that, Fire and Ash has a huge holiday period to collect.
For context, Avatar 2 opened to Rs. 48.50 crore first day in India and went on to gross Rs. 465 crore in its full run, becoming the highest-grossing Hollywood film of all time in India.