Avatar: Fire and Ash showed no signs of slowing down, topping the North American box office for the fifth consecutive week over the long holiday weekend, industry estimates showed Sunday.
The third installment in director James Cameron’s blockbuster fantasy series earned another $17.2 million from Friday to Monday, when Americans observed Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This brought its U.S. and Canadian total to $367.4 million and its worldwide gross to more than $1.3 billion, according to Exhibitor Relations.
The film stars Zoe Saldana as Na’vi warrior Neytiri and Sam Worthington as ex-Marine Jake Sully, who must confront a new threat to their family on the planet Pandora. Fire and Ash is Cameron’s fourth film to surpass the $1 billion mark, joining the first two Avatar films and Titanic.
Debuting in second place with $15 million was 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the fourth installment in the zombie horror series, released less than a year after the previous film.
Disney’s animated sequel Zootopia 2 demonstrated its staying power, rising to third place with $12 million over the four-day weekend. In fourth place, The Housemaid, an adaptation of Freida McFadden’s best-selling novel about a young woman employed by a wealthy couple with dark secrets, earned $10.2 million. The Lionsgate release stars Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried.
Marty Supreme, featuring Oscars frontrunner Timothée Chalamet as a conniving 1950s table tennis player with big dreams, finished fifth with $6.7 million.
Rounding out the top 10 were Primate ($6 million), Greenland 2: Migration ($3.9 million), Anaconda ($3.8 million), The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants ($3 million), and No Other Choice ($2.7 million). AFP
