At $1.5 billion worldwide collections, 'Avatar: The Way of Water' beats 'Top Gun' to become highest-grossing film of 2022

James Cameron's 'Avatar: The Way of Water' has soared past 'Top Gun: Maverick' to become the highest-grossing movie of 2022. In just three weeks, the movie has managed to rake in $1.5 billion in worldwide collections, soaring past the $1.489 billion that the ‘Top Gun’ sequel had earned during its theatrical run. With this, the sequel to 2009's 'Avatar' has become the biggest movie of 2022.

Released 13 years after the first film, the sequel took just under 13 days to cross the $1 billion mark at the box office with a strong showing in foreign markets. Despite the ongoing pandemic situation in China, the movie has managed to earn $162 million at the box office in the country. The original ‘Avatar’ had managed to earn $262 million in China, including a re-release in 2021 that propelled the movie to become the highest-grossing film of all time. ‘Avatar’ had earned a monstrous $2.9 billion at the global box office.

However, in the US domestic market, ‘Avatar 2’ is still behind ‘Top Gun 2’. ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ managed to earn a total of $718 million at the US box office while as of Wednesday ‘The Way of Water’ has only earned $465 million so far. Though domestic ticket sales for ‘The Way of Water’ continue to grow as the movie is facing little in the way of competition in terms of big budget releases until February when it will go up against Marvel's "Ant-Man and the Wasp".