Weekend projections: Avatar sneaking past Bone Temple to secure a likely weekend win

Avatar: Fire and Ash will most likely stay top at the box office this weekend, with 20th Century Studios projecting $13.32-million in domestic earnings over three days. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is set for a $13-million debut over three days. Technically, those estimates are within the typical margin of error for Sunday numbers, but Avatar clearly has the momentum, particularly with the long weekend likely to favor more family-friendly fare.

Here are the official studio projections for the weekend (click the image for a full chart of all films reporting so far).

Fire and Ash will finish today with $363.5 million domestically and $955.3 million internationally, with another $44.5 million earned overseas this weekend. That gives the film a global total of $1,318.8 million so far. Our model now predicts it will finish with $407.5 million in North America, which would map out to something around $1.475 billion worldwide.

Disney’s big celebration this weekend is for Zootopia 2, which is now the highest-grossing animated film from a US studio. Its $1.313 billion international take, combined with $390 million domestic, gives it $1.703 billion in total, just ahead of Inside Out 2, which we peg at $1.699 billion, while Disney states it has made $1.7 billion this morning. (What’s a million dollars between friends?) Once our chart updates, Zootopia 2 will be the 9th-highest grossing film of all time. Spider-Man: No Way Home stands in 8th place with $1.921 billion, which seems out of reach for Zootopia.

For 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, this has turned into a tough weekend, with lackluster previews leading into poor legs over the full weekend, in spite of excellent reviews. There’s a good argument to be made that this sequel came too soon after the previous film in the franchise, and fundamentally it was never positioned to draw in new fans. Still, a drop in opening weekend from $30 million to $13 million is very steep (see a detailed comparison here).

One final note on the weekend, we don’t have full numbers from Fathom Events, but it looks as though The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and its sequel The Two Towers are earning enough to both hit the top 10 this weekend. It’s possible The Return of the King will do so too. I’ve included an estimate for Fellowship of the Ring in the chart above, and we’ll post full numbers for the weekend in our regular charts as and when we get the numbers from Fathom.

– Studio weekend projections

– All-time top-grossing movies in North America

– All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com