Avatar 2 box office India collection Day 5: After a thunderous start, the film’s now struggling

James Cameron’s highly anticipated Avatar: The Way of Water may have started off on a high note in India, with the film doing well down South, but the initial craze and excitement around the movie seems to be dwindling in the country.

According to a news report by India Today, Avatar 2’s opening collection in India was a staggering 40 crore rupees, thus making it the second-biggest Hollywood film to witness that kind of collections in India ever.

However, Avatar 2 is experiencing a decline in its box office collections and it is something that was already predicted by trade analysts, as per the same news report. According to several media reports, trade experts have said that the film’s collections will get better during the weekend.

Interestingly, despite the current state, Avatar 2 is very close to surpassing the 200-crore-club soon.

In India, Avatar 2 has played on more than 3800 screens, with over 17000 shows each day. It boasts the greatest advance of any Hollywood film scheduled for release in India in 2022. In total, the movie has sold 7.3L tickets totaling Rs. 20.94 Cr. It has outperformed films like Thor 4 (Rs. 14 Cr.) and Doctor Strange 2 (Rs 19.80 Cr) in terms of day 1 advance bookings collections.

According to media sources, Avatar 2 tickets cost a whopping Rs 2500 at premium multiplexes. Earlier, some regions in the National Capital Region sold out of the Rs 2500 seats for Black Panther 2. Additionally, premium multiplexes sold tickets for Spiderman: No Way Home and Brahmastra for prices exceeding Rs 2000.

In terms of Day 1 collections, Avatar 2 has seen an overall occupancy of 30-35% all over India, according to a report by entertainment portal Koimoi. But the collection also involves 2D numbers and that makes it an average start. However, the 3D and higher versions are doing well and with 3800+ screens assigned to the film, the forementioned occupancy rate is pretty good.

It has also been reported by the website that Avatar 2 is doing remarkably well in South India, while the Northern belt isn’t performing as per trade expectations.

The James Cameron-directorial made a whopping Rs 40.50 crore at the box office on its day of release, December 16, thus making Avatar 2 the second-highest opener in India. The first movie to achieve this feat being Avengers: Endgame (2019) which had earned Rs 53.10 crore on its opening day.

By the end of Day 3, Avatar 2 had collected more than Rs 3,500 crore at the box office worldwide. On Tuesday (December 20), the film’s collections took a major beating. The film, which is a sequel to Cameron’s uber successful movie Avatar back in 2009, made only Rs 16 crore in India on Day 5.

Sadly, the film’s director James Cameron, who made the first installment back in 2009, said that the franchise will cease to exist if the box office numbers are not upto the marl. He stated, in his interview with Total Film, “The market could be telling us we’re done in three months, or we might be semi-done, meaning: ‘OK, let’s complete the story within movie three, and not go on endlessly’ if it’s just not profitable.”

Directed by James Cameron, Avatar: The Way of Water or Avatar 2 released worldwide on December 16, 2022.