Avatar: The Way of Water: THIS is how much James Cameron's film is likely to gross in opening weekend

James Cameron might have taken as many as 13 years to dish out the sequel to Avatar but the excitement has only grown multifold over the years. Avatar: The Way of Water, the second instalment of Cameron's mega-ambitious series, is all set to conquer the global box office this Friday, December 16, and the film has massive records pinned to it already. According to the latest reports, Avatar 2 is estimated to gross more than $500 million globally in the opening weekend alone.

Yes, Deadline reports that the film is expected to arrive at the box office with a "global outlook of $525 million" and to aid Cameron and co. in these pursuits, Disney is ensuring that the project is their widest theatrical release to date. Avatar: The Way of Water will release across 52,000 screens worldwide to beat the record set by Avengers: The End Game.

The pre-release box office estimates have the U.S/Canada markets contributing up to $175 million on the high end (as the upper limit) and about $350 million overseas. Previously, as the same Deadline report states, Spider-Man: No Way Home arrived at the box office with a global projection of $290M to $350M but ended up collecting close to $600 million in the opening weekend: No Way Home is said to have earned $121.85 million in U.S/Canada on the opening day alone with the first weekend collections amounting to $260 million domestically. The film went on to earn $1.91 billion worldwide during the course.

The Way of Water, on the other hand, will first be released on Wednesday (December 14) in crucial international markets like France, Korea, Germany and Italy with China, another massive market for Hollywood, getting 3000 previews a day prior to the actual theatrical release on December 16. On Friday, Way of Water would have released across 52 potential markets worldwide (including India) which do not include Russia due to geopolitical reasons.