‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Sends Michael Bay’s Millennial Masterpiece to the Box Office Scrap Heap

2 days ago 12

Image via 20th Century Studios

Rahul Malhotra is a Weekend News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he'll watch anything once.

He has been writing for Collider for over two years, and has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal to introduce audiences to a whole new world of cinema.

Swing and a miss > measured victory. Also, #JusticeForHan. (He/Him).

Time is running out for James Cameron's Avatar: Fire and Ash to make further gains at the box office; it won't be long before it's met with real competition for the first time in a month. The movie has successfully jumped past the $1 billion hurdle, and is now charging towards the $2 billion milestone that both its predecessors were able to cross. Although Avatar 3 is primed to become the lowest-grossing installment of Cameron's generation-defining series, it will still end its run as one of the highest-grossing films of all time. At the domestic box office, the blockbuster threequel has now overtaken another movie that spawned a film franchise beloved to millennials, director Michael Bay's Transformers. And as it rises up the rankings, Avatar 3 will probably pass every Transformers movie on the global charts this weekend as well.

With more than $320 million at the domestic box office, the film has passed the $318 million lifetime domestic haul of Transformers. Bay's movie, based on the popular toy line from the 1980s, was released in 2007, just two years before Cameron's first Avatar demolished global box office records to become the top-grossing film in history. The first Avatar's lifetime global haul stands at $2.9 billion, including re-release revenue; its sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, made $2.3 billion in its run a couple of years ago, and is now the third-biggest film ever made. Cameron is the only director to have made four films in a row to have grossed over $1 billion worldwide; three of them have made more than $2 billion. The first Transformers film, on the other hand, concluded its global run with more than $700 million, against a reported budget of $150 million.

Michael Bay Directed Five Films in the Transformers Franchise

Headlined by Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, it holds a 57% critics' score and a terrific 85% audience score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Bay returned to direct four further films in the series, two of which made more than $1 billion globally. The Transformers franchise is in a limbo right now, with the last live-action movie having underperformed both critically and commercially. The future of the Avatar series is uncertain as well, with Cameron having stated that the third film might be his last one. Produced on a reported budget of $400 million, Avatar 3 has earned the most lukewarm reviews of the series, and is now sitting at a 66% score on RT. You can watch the film in theaters, as it aims to top the domestic box office charts for the fourth time in a row this weekend. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.